POLITICS & CIVILIZATION FOR THE PASSIONATE CENTRIST

Stereotypes

Righty: You have to be either blind or a political correctness fanatic (essentially the same thing) not to notice that blacks are superior athletes or that Jews are smart. Let’s face it: Asians love technology, Latin Americans love hot music, the Irish love drinking and politics. I’m not going out of my way to be offensive here; I’m just stating that we shouldn’t ignore the obvious. That’s what Lefty and his fellow PC freaks are doing when they deny the validity of stereotypes. I find it exasperating that godless liberals insist on explaining evolution strictly in genetic terms, yet they throw a hissy fit if you mention the role of genetics in determining the behavior of ethnic groups. We know that individual dog breeds, for example, exhibit distinct behavioral traits that have been perpetuated through selective breeding. Why shouldn’t it be the same with members of ethnic groups that have married within their own tribe for centuries?

Lefty: I won’t dignify Righty’s ghastly prejudices with a lengthy retort; I’ll let his ignorance speak for itself. (With his comparison of ethnic groups to dog breeds, Righty has just possibly reached a new low even by his standards.) Let me just assert that stereotypes are responsible for some of the most hateful crimes in human history, including most genocides. We reduce living, breathing individuals to identical units in a group. Then we dispose of the group. So neat and convenient, isn’t it? (Shudder.)

The New Moderate: Stereotypes aren’t simply the wild fabrications of flaming bigots. Nearly all stereotypes, crude as they are, contain a kernel of truth that no open-minded person can deny. Jews, on average, do have higher IQs (and incomes) than the rest of us. Blacks do comprise a vastly disproportionate percentage of basketball, football, boxing and track superstars. And nobody who listens to hip-hop can honestly dispute the much-ridiculed notion that black people seem to possess a racially inherited sense of rhythm. Nearly all black music and dance — African and African-American alike — inform our ears and eyes that they do. Whether the inheritance is genetic or cultural is beside the point; all that matters is the finished product.

Is the black rhythm hypothesis a blatant stereotype? Of course it is, and a relatively silly one at that. But is it an inaccurate stereotype? I don’t think so. We know it doesn’t apply to all black people (we’re not sure we’d want to see Oprah attempt to break-dance), but it applies to enough blacks within our experience to make the generalization stick.

Why do Lefty and Company profess to detest all stereotypes — even positive ones? Because stereotypes deny due credit to individual talents and efforts. (If blacks are naturally superior athletes, then it follows that Willie Mays and Muhammad Ali were nothing special.) More insidiously, the mind that observes positive stereotypes is likely to use the same mental tools to concoct negative stereotypes. To the stereotyping mind, Jews are smart but also pushy; blacks are not only physically talented but intellectually indifferent. You can see why we’d want to avoid this line of thinking.

The New Moderate should point out that stereotyping isn’t an exclusive pastime of the right. (Those who accuse right-wingers of indulging in stereotypes are themselves indulging in stereotypes.) Lefty’s opinions of fundamentalist Christians, Republicans, the military, white male authority figures, Texans and other mortal enemies bear a distinct resemblance to stereotypes — even vicious stereotypes — though of course Lefty would simply shrug and insist that the truth can be unflattering.

Why do so many of us — right, left and center alike — engage in stereotyping? Because stereotypes help create order in a disorderly world. If you know what to expect from Group A or Group B (or think you know what to expect), then you know (or think you know) what to expect from all the individuals inthose groups. Stereotypes help an uncertain soul feel more at ease in the cosmos.

Regardless of the common traits passed down from one generation to the next, all ethnic groups are made up of individuals. The more individual those individuals are, the less they resemble the group norm. Talented Jewish athletes and black scholars should never have to find themselves imprisoned by group stereotypes. Neither should heterosexual male interior decorators or gay airline pilots. Stereotypes are valid only as crude caricatures of group characteristics (and I’m probably giving them too much credit). They should never, ever be used to prejudge individuals within the group.

The folks who do resemble the negative stereotypes for their group are usually the ones who haven’t bothered to develop as individuals. Gun-toting black thugs, Jewish wheeler-dealers, puritanical WASPs, boorish Russians and rednecks, bland Asian technogeeks, compulsively clannish Greeks and Armenians, slap-happy Irish drunks… all of them exist in real life, at least to a degree — and they tend to make their more enlightened kinsmen blush on behalf of their tribe.

The unenlightened ones simply inherit their behavior from their family and neighbors, follow the path of least resistance and never carve out their own identities. They’re still creatures of the herd, and their numbers are probably larger than we’d comfortably like to admit. But do they deserve recognition as fitting representatives of their breed? Absolutely not. We should cheer all the quirky mavericks who emerge from those groups: nerdy blacks, lovably goofy Germans, ethereal Latinos, math-averse Asian rock stars and fashion-challenged gay men. They give us reassuring evidence that individualism is stronger than inheritance.

Summary: Most stereotypes contain nuggets of truth about various groups, but they’re only crude caricatures and should never be used to prejudge individuals within a group.

TK: It’s probably mostly a cultural phenomenon, but (and this isn’t going to win me any friends) I think there’s also a genetic element. People go with their strengths. Jews have higher than average IQs, so naturally they value intellectual and professional pursuits. And they tend to favor mates who share their values. The result: kids with even higher IQs. The genes feed the cultural values, which feed the genes… But which came first, the “chicken” or the “egg”?

Survival of the fitest… And Jews are up there in the “trials of nature” list. When everbody hates you, stupidity is not a survival trait. That last problem always annoys me, it’s the egg. “What laid it?” You say, “who cares?” apparently not a chicken…

Genetics? That can only be proven if you are able to test babies uninhibited by the cultural mores of those who raise them.

Until then, stereotypes are first and foremost, based on cultural phenomenon.

Secondly, and I believe more importantly, they are observations made by people outside of the group being observed solely intended, whether “positive” or “negative”, for the purpose of classifying the observed group as the other.

Thus, all stereotypes are inherently negative as they are meant to justify, dismiss or nullify the differences being observed.

Example 1: ” he/she’s not special, he’s this or that, and those people are prone to be this or that. So, see, he/she’s not special.”

Example 2: ” all blank people are such and such so it’s no surprise that so and so embodies such and such.

Bansee: Sure, there’s a certain amount of stereotyping here to characterize the extremist viewpoints and have some fun with them. But I also put some good arguments into their mouths on issues where I think the left and right do have valid arguments. See my introduction to The Issues at the top of the list.

Gesundheit! Are you sure you’re not mistaking “Righty’s” opinions for my own? Hint: This is a three-way debate, featuring typical right- and left-wing talking points. Then I chime in with my moderate viewpoint.

Did the thing about black people having rhythm upset you? Yes, it’s a stereotype (that’s what we’re discussing here). And it’s a silly stereotype, but not an unfounded one. Stereotypes wouldn’t become popular if they didn’t have a certain amount of truth behind them. If you read closely, you’ll see that I’m not fond of stereotypes, and I caution against using them to prejudge individuals.

a typical lefty is the most consistent stereotype in existence, and most true to reality..

a righty is everyone that on any issue disagrees with a lefty, whowhich there upon goes into a Pavlovian spasm, feeling in hisherits conditioned soul which hesheit doesnt believe hesheit possesses all the evils of an unequal world pressing on himherit.

as far as stereotypes go, they are mostly true and actually should be true according to their own marxist theory. they of course, reserve this term for the stereotypes they deem undesirable.

someone seeing the world in stereotypes (everyone not lefty) is a stereotype itself. They alone, since all the same, are free of all stereotypes.. lol

Pattern recognition & generalization are survival mechanisms. Consequently, an experience-based default position is useful, but be aware that you have one and be willing to modify / discard it as specific data about a particular individual becomes available.

I never thought Vladdie and Donnie got together and worked out a handshake deal to scratch each other’s back during the primaries or election. Like everyone one else they probably he would only be a short term irritant but get his ass dumped out quickly. But once that changed, and he looked like he could secure the nomination, Russia shifted into high gear to help him.

Why? I think tRump was involved in sneaky illegal deals with Russians previously, and Putin or his close pals had fingers in them too, and they could use that to leverage him in ways that would make tRump amendable to Russian interests. The ‘collusion’ that followed (which I doubt can be proved by other than circumstantial evidence) was likely assurances back and forth to protect each other’s interests: tRump wouldn’t rock the Russian ship in any meaningful way (and he hasn’t) and they wouldn’t torpedo tRump’s Party Boat with leaks about the deals he had done with them (they haven’t – yet).

If tRump was involved in shady money laundering deals with the Russians, even if it was a decade ago, and Mueller has uncovered persuasive links to them, don’t you think those hidden crimes should be revealed?

Isn’t it likely links to those deals are buried in his tax returns, and that’s why he won’t release them?

And if true, isn’t that kind of unsavory financial behavior sufficient justification to impeach him?

The generic ballot is down to +4 and +6 for democrats.
This is in the range that Republicans actually win at.

We have 11 months to go.

Judicial Watch made and FOIA request for Andrew McCabes texts arround the time of the Strzok Insurance meeting with Andy text, and DOJ/FBI said FU.

DOJ/FBI have withheld more than 80% of Stzok/Page’s tests are either “personal” or “harmful to an ongoing investigation” – aka Mueller.

Further Many Strzok Page texts explicitly jump to their personal iPhones.

1). Strzok and Pages “personal” texts on FBI Phones are fair game.
While I would prefer their not being smeared all over the places.
There is no right to privacy in communications on work related accounts.
The determination as to whether they are “personal” belongs with congress not the FBI/DOJ.

2). I beleive that a few members of congress should be given full access to the Strzok/Page texts, in order to determine if they concur regarding the DOJ/FBI judgement that they can not be disclosed. Hopefully the IG has also accessed them.

3). Where there is sufficient basis to get a warrant, DOJ/FBI should seek Strzok/Page’s work related or Trump/Clinton related communications on their personal phones.
There personal communications there are private.

Dave I dont count on anything other than the GOP doing everything in their power to lose an election. Remember Trump was the nominee and had anyone other than Clinton ran against him he most likely would have lost.

So in PA 13th district, they have a special election on March 13th since the GOP rep had to resign. Republican leaders selected state Rep. Rick Saccone as their nominee. Saccone, an ardent social conservative, once sponsored a “Year of the Bible” resolution in the legislature and has a Harrisburg voting record for Democrats to attack. During his brief Senate run earlier this year, Saccone, a former counterintelligence officer, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that “we have to establish relationships” with North Korea. Can someone please explain why the GOP would pick a moronic social conservative that tends to support government control of individuals social values when the district has many more moderate democrats than conservative Republicans? Do they really think they can hold this seat with a candidate that is more suited for a district loaded with born again christians?

You and agree on one thing. Surprise. I will be surprised if the GOP holds the house and you will be surprised if they dont.

It is a bifurcated purple state – democrats concentrated in cities and a vast very conservative urban area with the balance of power determined by pinkish suburban areas.

Democrats too the executive in the last election and have governed badly.

Yes, Republicans often pick bad candidates, As do democrats.

Further an awful lot of who gets elected to national office pivots and incredibly local issues.

I do not think either of us are big fans of republicans.
But you seem to share my view that it is more common for a republican to the the lessor evil.

My assessment of 2018 is not rooted in my hopes.
Congress is not changing in 2018 in anyway that I would hope.

My idea of success would be to libertarians winning a larger share of the vote, and libertarian and fiscal conservative republicans gaining a few more seats in congress – regardless of the overall results. I think that is likely anyway – but I also expect those gains to be small.

I would further note that while I want to see the House Freedom Caucus gain power, the Freedom caucus is for the most part – still the lessor evil – s,ighly better than your average republican most of the time.

My guesses as to 2018 are based on my read of the tea leafs – where things will be in Nov. 2018, not where they are now.

I would note that the GOP was purportedly highly unpopular after the 2013 shutdown and they still did very well in 2014.

I do not think the Generic ballot is nearly as meaningful as pundits take it.

I also think that polls misread republican support.

You make plenty of disparaging comments about republicans – and I agree with them.

I will be voting in 2018, and I would expect you will too.

What is the likelyhood you are voting for a democrat ?
I would guess not very high.

It does not matter how stupid you think republican choices elsewhere are.
It does not matter what mistakes you think Republicans are making.
It does not matter how strongly negative your views of republicans or even how favorable your views of democrats generaically are.

Unless you care going to vote for Democrats in 2018 – any poll that involves you is likely to lean wrong.

What matters is how voters vote. Not what they tell pollsters.

As we progress through the next year:

The economy is likely to brighten substantially.
Even just maintaining the current 3% averages will favor republicans heavily.

It is possible the economy could turn sour – and if it does Republicans are toast.
But if it does not you can expect voters to be increasingly favorable to republicans as the year progresses.

Though the polls were not crystal clear, it is obvious the shutdown was a disaster for the left.

Democrats are facing an internal civil war. There base – about 23% of all voters wants jihad, wants scorched earth, and is not going to be appeased by anything less.

But 23% of the vote does not win elections. What the democratic base wants and what the majority of people who can be persuaded to vote democrat is 180 degrees apart.

IF democrats lose their base – they will be in trouble in 2018.
And if they appease their bade – they will be in trouble in 2018.

We have had the first round of the immigration fight, but there is more to come.
What matters is NOT Trump, or Republicans or Miller or …..
But what is going on with democrats.

What matters (politically) is not whether there is an immigration bill, nor what it looks like, but whether the Democrats have managed to come together – to make both there base and they larger body of nominally democratic voters.

This whole Trump Russia thing is not only running out of steam – we are now into backlash.

Trump has to negotiate his interview with Mueller. I think it is wishful thinking on the left to beleive they are going to get something. I am not sure what is going to happen – but I think that Trump’s lawyers are going to prevent Mueller from engaging in a fishing expedition and from catching Trump in a “process crime”.

Further there is very little that Trump can testify to that can get him in Trouble.
Differneces of recollection over what was said in private unrecorded meetings is NOT going to get Mueller anywhere. Trump remains personally completely unconnected to anything.

I am not sure where the current republican attacks on the DOJ/FBI are going.

I think Republicans – particularly those in the house are extremely pissed at DOJ/FBI – not just for this current mess, but because since 2009 the FBI/DOJ has done a whitewash job of issue atfer issue that republicans wanted investigated and stonewalled on providing information to congress.

I think we have a separate conflict between the Republican Congress and DOJ.FBI coming to a head with the Trump investigation.

I think that house republicans are actively looking to compel DOJ/FBI to become much more responsive to their requests for information.
I think the threat to release the memo is explicitly related to that.

Again there is more going on than Trump/Russia.

At the same time Republicans as a whole are NOT comfortable attacking the FBI particularly.

Ultimately I think that all of this is going to fizzle – that a detente is going to be reached, that the Mueller investigation will wind down, the Trump investigation will wind down, the reopening of the investigations of past Obama admin misconduct will wind down and Congress will end its attacks on the FBI.

I think that is likely to happen soon.
And the media starved of information will move on.

That is not what I think should happen. I think alot of heads need to roll.

Regardless, I do not think people – voters are expecting anything new and harmful to Trump and Republicans.

I think the failure to get anywhere with Trump and the questions about partisanship in the FBI/DOJ will over time diminish the anti-trump anger in persuadable democrats.
The left quarter of the country is going to remain mouth foamingly deranged.
But they do not decide elections.

Dave “I will be voting in 2018, and I would expect you will too.
What is the likelyhood you are voting for a democrat ?
I would guess not very high.”

yes I will be voting. Yes I will vote for the useless Republican representatjve because their most likely will not be a Libertarian running.

As for the the Freedom Caucus other than their position on spending I know little about them and there is little other than they are fiscal and social conservatives. If so, that turns me negative to them as that means they do not support womens rights, gay msrriage, marijuana legalization by states and based on these positions, most likely do not support state rights.

But when push comes to shove, Fiscal issues shove social issue to second fiddle when I vote.

It has social conservatives as members – it they are otherwise aligned on issues of liberty.

All the libertarian or libertarian leaning republicans are members, Many Tea Party and Fiscal conservatives are. Some of those are also social conservatives.

It is by far the most agressively limited government group in Congress.

The Freedom caucus is primarily responsible for Bohner’s resignation,

Boehner said of them:
“They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.”[
That is pretty much what you would expect a statist to say about libertarians.
The Freedom caucus is FOR greater individual liberty, that means they are pretty much against most everything Boehner stands for.

The Freedom Caucus has been congresses strongest opposition to Trump – who very nearly declared war on them. At the same time they are among the most fierce critics of the “deep state”, they are the strongest leaders in the attack on DOJ/FBI spying.

They are the single largest group opposed to section 702 re-authorization.

I know that Jay can not grasp this, but you do not have to like Trump to be opposed to politicially corrupt government.

The Freedom cause has lead the efforts to defund PP, Exim, CFPB, straight repeal PPACA.
They are uncompromising.

I would be surprised if no members of the Freedom Caucus are opponents of drug legalization, or advocates of abortion restrictions, or possibly anti-gay.
The caucus as a whole has not taken up these issues.

I may have give some credit to Trump again, but too soon to tell: “WASHINGTON — It was all but ignored last year when it was wrapped into a sanctions law punishing Russian aggressions. But in recent weeks, a requirement that the United States identify Russian oligarchs in a public list has set off a cavalcade of anxious lobbying across Washington by those who fear their links to the Kremlin will jeopardize their financial well-being.

The Trump administration is set to release the list on Monday in a report that — to the surprise of many — serves as a new tool to punish wealthy backers of the world’s autocrats, simply by naming them.”

I am a landlord. I have 5 apartments. When I rent those apartments I do background checks on tenants for two reasons: First because I like to get paid, 2nd because if I rent to disruptive people I risk losing my other tenants and pissing off the neighbors.

I do not check if my Tenants are “illegal aliens” that is not my business.
I do not care nor ask if they are drug dealers or prositutes EXCEPT – if they piss off other tenants, or annoy the neighbors. But I am not going to rent to people who make a living that way – because they can not prove income.

The lives of my tenants are not my business – so long as they pay their rent, Do not destroy my building, and do not disturb other tenants or neighbors.

For some that is a challenge.

Government demands that I report my collected rents, and operating expenses, and pay taxes on the difference as income. But I am not asked who pays how much rent, nor am I required to identify to the government who I rent to.

If I were buying and selling houses, instead of Renting – the rules should be the same.
It is not governments business who I buy and sell to.
It is not governments business how the people who buy and sell from me make their money.

It is the same with this stuff you are talking about.

I am opposed to government gathering information on people just because it can demand it.

I do not have a problem “shaming people” for doing business with “bad people”.
The people living near my apartments will “shame me” if I rent to disruptive people.
That is perfectly fine.

If New York Times can figure out who is doing business with what “bad people” – I have no problem with their publishing it.

But I have a big problem with government gathering and providing that information.

But I have only touched on something else.
It is NOT governments business how the people who do business with me, made their money.
In many instances it is NOT mine either.

The entire purpose of money is to divorce my free exchanges from the exchanges that the people I am dealing with have with others. Barter is unmanageable except where you need what the other person is providing and they need what you are.

Money does not itself have a moral attribute. It does not carry with it the sins of those who currently possess it. Nor does it care how they came to posses it.

If some act is a crime – it is the act that is the crime – not the money involved.

Failing to grasp that causes us often to make bad judgements.

It is not the person looking to bribe the housing inspector who is committing the crime.
It the housing inspector – for failing his duty in his job.

Sorta sad, sad, when people migrate from a great, great, culture and wisdom chocked full thread to an empty desolate space with no resident pontificator like me. I’m sure they are not Norwegians, but I guess some of them are really nice people. How long will that last?
#putzus@WH

Dave “Do you think repeating the same falsehoods makes them any more true ? Any less reprehensible.”

They may not be any more true, but the longer they are repeated the more morons begin to believe them. Its just like “Spare the rod, spoil the child” is thought to be an almost exact quote from the bible.

It is not. It is a quote from the poet Samuel Butler in his work “Hudibras,” written in the 17th century.

But it has been repeated billions of time and now it is fact that it is in the bible to most everyone who has heard it.

So if you say “Trump colluded with the Russians to illegally capture the election, it becomes “truth” to most people who are anti-Trump. It does not need to be proven.

Joseph Goebbels is often credited with saying “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”

It is stunning to me that millions of anti-Trump people believe that he somehow conspired with Russians to defeat Hillary, despite zero evidence. Yet, with mounting evidence that the FBI and DOJ actually tried to help Hillary and destroy Trump, those very same people are convinced that deep state corruption is a crazy conspiracy theory.

But, the two sides hear different “facts,” pretty much every day. I listen to, and read, news from both sides. I will admit that I often have to force myself to sit through a panel discussion or monologue on CNN, but I’m sure that Jay would feel the same if he had to watch Hannity. Nevertheless, I do, and, over the past month or so, as the Strzok-Page texts have come out, Senators Grassley and Graham have demanded a criminal investigation into Christopher Steele, multiple congressmen and senators have read the Nunes memo, summarizing the House Intelligence Committees findings thus far, the DOJ has resisted de-classifying the memo for “national security” reasons, etc.,etc.,etc…. I have barely heard these things mentioned on CNN, and, if they are, they are dismissed as partisan nonsense.

While on Fox, those stories are the centerpiece of almost every show. While CNN was saying “shithole” every 5 minutes, Tucker Carlson was doing monologues on the FBI being out of control.

Is it any wonder that people see the news in diametrically opposite ways?

“with mounting evidence that the FBI and DOJ actually tried to help Hillary and destroy Trump”

Yeah, releasing an alert that more Clinton emails had been uncovered a week before the election, helping tip it in tRump’s favor, was a brilliant strategy to help Hillary. If you don’t get that, youre another Fox brainwashed dupe. The question you should be asking is why Fox continues to stifle negative tRump news? Every time the Idiot In Office says or does something outlandishly stupid or news of past stupidities come to light, while the FULL media is reporting on it, Fox is deflecting to negative Clinton tales. That was obvious when Stormy’s payoff for silence was front page, and lede news nationwide. Tucker (rhymes with..) Carlson and The Five pretty much ignored it, deflecting instead to past tales about both Clintons or popularity polls showing the Groper was now more popular than Hillary.

The only Fox newscaster worth a damn is Shepard Smith, a true American in heart and mind

Comey was required by the rules of professional ethics, as well as those regarding candor to a tribunal to inform congress that more emails had been found.

Comey’s letter was made public by congress – not himself.

If in some proceeding under oath you testify that X is true, and subsequently – even through no fault of your own, that changes, you are obligated to correct your testimony.

Why is some talking heads “review” of Trump news ?

You are the only one who seems to think that the media should be constantly telling us what other elites think or say.

Even you keep linking to Fox when you can get a talking head there to disparage Trump.

I am interested in FACTS.

I have very little interest in Fox, I do not pay much attention to them.
While I think that your criticisms of them are either misplaced or inconsequential compared to much of the rest of the media – Fox is at best a small part of the sewer than is modern Mass media.

The Stormy Daniels story died – because it was never consequential news.

Several prominent conservative critics of Trump – such as SE Cupp penned excellent analysis of it.

Trump – unlike nearly every US president ever has not claimed moral authority.
He did not run for President claiming moral superiority.

The Daniels story does not tell us something we did not know well before the election.

If Daniels got some money from Trump in return for silence over embarrassing information that told us nothing about Trump we did not already know – good for her.

If you have credible evidence of rape, sexual assault, actual sexual harrasment,
It you have evidence of abuse of power, or perjury – that is meaningful.

You want to argue because you can not force Fox to provide massive air time to elite anti-trumpers to enlighten us all as to how we should think, that fax is therefore evil ?

I am interested in facts, I do not much care for the latest “Argh!Trump!” nonsense.

You have plenty of sources for that as that is what floats your boat.

You do understand that you are littlerally arguing that YOU should be allowed to do what you claim the Russians did – and inundate us with only the influences you wish all of us to see.

I am not going to defend Fox – except to note that your Fox attack is more deflection and Tangents. Though I would note that Carlson has been frequently critical of Trump.

But you are slowly finding the attacks on Trump -particularly from the right dying.

Why ?
Because Trump has won.
It has been established that the left and the MSM have spent almost two years atttacking Trump and the attacks have proven to be rooted in lies.

When two people are pummeling each other, we determine the truth of who is the bully and who is defending themselves – based on the truth of the underlying conflict – not petty parsing of their remarks to each others.

The Trump/Russia story is not only dying – it is leaving everyone associated with pushing it covered in excrement.
That means Trump is increasingly appearing self righteous and truthful, and the media and the left as a deceptive bullies.

If Fox as a whole has had limited involvement in the bullying – that is to their credit.

I know very little of Shepard Smith – beyond your posts.
But it appears he has tied himself to the wrong side, to his ultimate discredit.

Regardless, of whether the DOJ/FBI had a “secret society”, or was out to get Trump, it is self evident that the DOJ and FBI never had any basis for the Trump/Russia nonsense and did not believe it.

We can fight over details. There is no argument that we have all been caught up in a narrative that the FBI/DOJ knew was false BEFORE the election.

I would remind everyone that Trump repeatedly asked Comey to confirm that there was no FBI investigation alleging Trump had colluded with the Russians. Comey confirmed under oath those requests took place. Comey confirmed under oath that there was no investigation of Trump.
In other words Comey confirmed under oath that he was conducting an investigation that had no basis and that firing him was not merely reasonable, but required.

Jay, the left and the media are praying for a lightning strike – that Meuller will ferret out some financial crime, or obstruction, or get Trump to perjure himself.

In the highly unlikely event they succeed – even that will not alter the fact that the DOJ/FBI using OPO Research from a political party as the basis started an investigation of an opposing political campaign, sought and received FISA warrants, and continued this investigation – admittedly absent any evidence, and that this investigation continues through today.

If the left shot the moon – it still would be the fruits of even greater corruption.

I very rarely “watch” TV news. The vast majority of what I get of News, is from published stories.
Sometimes those stories have clips from Fox or CNN, but mostly I am focussed on FACTS.

What talking heads and reporters say is meaningless. I am focused on what those acting in this saga say – and mostly the facts they assert and the timeline of what they know/knew.

To the extent possible I look for primary sources. The actors themselves where possible. Certainly not the spin meistering of talk show hosts.

If you eliminate the posturing, and the “fake news” and stick to actual facts the Trump/Russia narative is not possible. All that remains is whether the DOJ/FBI were engaged in a soft coup or politically corrupt and biased or just incredibly incompetent.

I am not sure where things are going to go.
I am highly suspicious this could all die very rapidly. DOJ/FBI are subject to intense public scrutiny now – that is only going to get worse.

The wrong but easy political solution that would appeal to DOJ/FBI as well as establishment republicans and most democrats would be to have this all die as quickly as possible.

Because if that does NOT happen – we are going to be looking at more texts from Stzok/Page – Congress has seen less than 20% of their texts. We are going to be looking at their emails, and possibly their texts on personal devices. We are going to be looking at the texts and emails of Andrew McCabe, as well as those of James Comey, and a large number of others.
At the very least we will find ever increasing evidence of bias.

The FBI/DOJ are fighting the release of information today like a mother tiger defending cubs. They are slowly losing that fight. Nothing released thus far has posed a threat to “national security”.

I would ask those on the left – what the FBI/DOJ could be protecting that WOULD be a threat to national security.

Any actual threat to National Security would have to do something like expose an agent currently in place – probably in a foreign government.

The FACT is there is an extremely low probability that anything the FBI/DOJ are withholding poses any threat to national security.

Even exposing methods and sources is not an issue – if those methods or sources are mostly known already or are mostly from the past.

And in fact methods ans sources may be exactly what we need to know.
If as an example Powers and Rice were feeding the DOJ/FBI false information, or misrepresenting true information or otherwise acting as sources to drive and investigation – protecting that information is NOT in the interests of nations security.

Jay, of course the 4 day “re-opening” of Hillary’s email case was damaging to her, no doubt about it. It may very well have tipped the scales in the electoral college, especially since so many people waited until the last minute to decide which of two candidates that they disliked to vote for.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Comey was forced to re-open the case, because the NYPD and the FBI office in NYC already had Anthony Weiner’s laptop and they already knew that there were classified emails on it. As it was, he closed the case right back up within just a few days.

And it doesn’t change the fact that the emails were there!! The Secretary of State had emailed classified material to her aide, who was married to a well-known perv, from her unsecured, private email account, to the shared, unsecured private email account of a couple, one of whom had no security clearance at all, and was a blackmail victim waiting to happen.

But, instead of being horrified by the illegality and recklessness of this, you are upset that it may have hurt Hillary’s chances of being elected? If so, I do think that your priorities are a bit unhinged…

Beyond that all of this flows from Clinton’s own conduct – and that of those arround her.

Had Clinton kept her government exchanges on government equipment – there never would have been an issue.

Had there been no secret private server being used for government communications,
classified documents would not have been smeared all over the internet, as well as abedin and Wiener’s personal laptop.

If revelation of that was damaging to Clinton – that was driven by her own conduct.

The accesshollywood tape was also damaging to Trump.
It certainly ended the slights chance he was getting my vote.

It two was the consequence of his own conduct.

The Comey revalations were especially damaging BECAUSE people believed the FBI had given Clinton a pass.

Regardless, Jay is constantly arguing that we are not allowed to know damaging things about political candidates – because it might “alter the outcome of the election”.

I am left to wonder how he thinks people make their decisions regarding voting ?

We do so based on many things. ALL of which “alter the outcome of the election”
We do so based on what we beleive about what we are told.

We are provided the truth as well as lots of lies.
Everything we are provided “alters the outcome of the eleciton”

Aparently in jays world we must all be kept in hermetically sealed boxes, deprived of all information about candidates and required to vote without knowing anything.
Because anything might “alter the outcome of the election”

DAVOS – isn’t that an assemblage of the financial elite? And what’s the best way to reach wealthy business executive hearts (hypothetically assuming they have them)? Through their wallets of course. And who benefits MOST from sharply reduced corporate and business taxes? And from policies of deregulation? Go on- spit it out: DAVOS ATTENDEES! And when a bank robber shows up to dinner after a mega heist with those who will share in the spoils, do you expect any less than a fawning welcome?

And while President Spank-Me was puffing up his chest in boastful self aggrandizement, the Chinese were strangling our US international financial future with concerted deal making, once again.

Obama goes to Davos – that is great.
Trump goes to Davos – and he is conspiring with criminals, and Oh, Tarnishing the Reputation of the US (among those very criminals) at the same time.

A business, is just individual people engaged in free association for their own benefit.
Profit is the reward that businesses get for providing others with what they want and need.

The very thing you loath – profits, is the engine that drives almost the entirety of all improvement in the world. All the charity and government aide in the entire history of mankind has not added to a fraction of the benefits that small increases in economic freedom have brought in China and India in the past half century.

What you call evil is the incentive for nearly all the good that has ever been done.

Jay, your as bad as MSNBC. I could post hundreds of pro-Trump articles from Fox news daily, but it would not make them any more true. China may have been a winner, but just because they had a positive experience does not mean the way the liberal Times depicts the outcome that America also did not have a positive outcome is total BS.

You are smarter than to buy all this liberal crap, just as I have not bought into Trumps personal life behaviors.

I know that is it beyond your ability to grasp, but Governments are NOT the most important thing in the world. To the extent that they factor in our future that is merely the extent to which they interfere with freedom, and therefore interfere with a brighter Future.

Further you do not seem to grasp that in most free exchanges and many other things int he world, there are not merely winners and losers.

China doing better – as a people, as an economy, as a country, by most any measure, does not come at the expense of others.

The US doing better does not come at the expense of others.

Most free exchange is win-win.

When I buy a hamburger at McD’s I MUST be better off with the hamburger than my $1 or I would not have traded the $1 for the hamburger. Further McD’s must be better off with my $1 because otherwise they would not have traded the hamburger for the $1.

VALUE IS SUBJECTIVE – this is absolutely critical.

If it was not true that people routinely value things differently – SUBJECTIVELY,
no exchange would ever occur.

Because value is inherently subjective – free exchange occurs, and as a result most of the time both parties are better off.

When the those you loath PROFIT, that REQUIRES that someone else benefited.

Dave: “1). It does not matter. There is no significant study ever indicating any ability to compell someone to make a choice they do not want to purely through free expression (advertising and the like).”

The depth of your ignorance continues to amaze.

We’re not talking about COMPELLING someone to vote.
It’s about INFLUENCING enough voters to alter the outcome.

Like Stock Market manipulation to deliberately alter the price of stocks by creating false or contradictory or negative information about company or product or executives. Are you so uninformed you don’t understand individual stock holders aren’t coercered – the plan is to undermine or inflate the stock by disseminating/ distorting information.

Once the Russians realized tRump had a chance winning they deliberately tried to influence the outcome with MASSIVE bot postings. If you think that had no influence at all, you’re brain dead. Just as stock manipulation requires only small shifts in price to be successful (pennies difference in shares can shift millions to manipulators) only a tiny 2% shift in votes in the swing states to tRump cost Clinton the presidency.

Dave: “2). The russians are not stupid. They are not going to leave fingers pointing at themselves – unless they want to.”

A Silly uninformed assumption. The Russians were being watched by sophisticated investigators world-wide. The Dutch intelligence service passed on “crucial evidence” to the FBI about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election long before the Dossier was released. Hackers from their intelligence service AIVD gained access to the Russian hacking group “Cozy Bear” in the summer of 2014. Are you scatter-brained enough to suggest the Russians were letting the Dutch hack their operation as part of a grander scheme to falsely generate faux news about future hacking of the Democrats?

You know that scene from the Jack Nicoloson movie “The Shining” where he makes that crazed appearance from the doorway screaming “Here’s Johnny..”? I see and hear that in my mind every time you post a hair-brained like this one. Thanks for the entertainment.

Assuming arguendo the actual numbers he claimed were real (and not self contradictory or contradicted by other facts) they STILL are a drop in the bucket.

You are a victim of the fallacy of large numbers.
This BTW is a very common bogus left tactic. It is often used to push malthusian environmental garbage.
As an example some Glacier in antartica is shedding 80GT of water and ice each year.
Then we get stories of how huge an amount 80GT is – enough ice to cover Conneticut to 1000M or something like that.

But missing in the story is the fact that Antartica gains the quivalent of 500GT of ice each year through precipitation, and that a speedup of shedding means a mass BUILD UP.

I am not looking to get into the details about Antartica.

Merely looking to point out that 470K is a gain of sand – amoung 50B tweets during the last 100 days of the election.

And on October 13th this was published:
“Two days ago I became aware of an asset seizure related to a property owned by Edward and Brian Krassenstein.

The brothers are the owners of the now closed Ponzi promotion platforms, MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold.

In their forfeiture complaint, filed August 21st, the DOJ accused the Krassenstein brothers of conspiring to commit wire fraud. This strongly implied that the Krassenstein brothers were facing a wire fraud case of their own.

Can you bother to ever check the “facts” you post.
I beleive Ron has pointed out that Mr. Krassenstein is of dubious credibility.

Regardless, The #ReleaseTheMemo is from Russian Bot narrative has been discredited.

The “facts” Mr. Krassenstein is citing are from two reporters who were frequently paid by Fusion GPS to insert stories.
There is no credible source for those “facts”.
Twitter – itself prone to manufacture Russian Bots from thin air and probably sensative to allegations that they do so has denied that #releasethememo is driven by Russian bots.

This is what everyone hates about the left.
I am reading stories by some “conservative” writers who are cautioning not to get ahead of the political corruption story, that while things look pretty damning, it is not rock solid, that there is a difference between a conspiracy and a bunch of people saying stupid things.
That it is even possible that some of what we are being told is completely fake.
That in every story there are allege facts that prove true and some that prove false.

Sage advise – though what we are seeing with DOJ/FBI is pretty bad.
I expect to yawn at the Nunes Memo – because I expect it to say little or nothing new.
Merely to confirm bad stories that have been running for months.

Further I do not expect much of it – because what we already know is pretty damning.

Democrats are making a big stink that the “secret society” reference was a joke.
I do not know that it is, Nor do I know exactly what kind of “joke” it is.

But even the most benign interpretation is BAD.
There is no interpretation that does not make it clear they are deeply biased.
Objective investigators do not make jokes about “secret societies”.
But people doing things they know they should not do.

Regardless, Victor David Hanson – a published historian has a pretty good article summarizing the past year.

amgreatness.com/2018/01/29/conspiracy-theories-conspiracies/

What we already KNOW to be true is damning.

More important what we know to be false is equally damning.

Jay, the media, the left has been spraying us with claims for 18 months.
Still there is nothing. There is LESS today than this time last year.
Because many of the lies have been falsified.

The left’s remaining hopes are that Mueller will manage a “gotcha” in Trump’s testimony,
Or that firing the FBI director who knowingly ran a politically corrupt investigation is somehow “obstruction”

Jay lectures constantly about the evils of mythical twitter bots – as if Trump retweets tipped the election.

The left is incredibly good at making innocent acts sound criminal.
The right is incredibly bad at making us care about actually criminal acts.

You and I are perfectly free to spread rumors about some company. We can spread those rumors whether they are true or false.

Our rumors may or may not impact the price of the stock.

Guess what that is legal.

The ONLY Things that are illegal, is insiders sharing TRUE information about publicly traded companies – with a select few, giving them an advantage, AND those involved in the upper management of a publicly traded company misrepresenting the current status of that company.

That is it. Otherwise people are free to say whatever they want regarding a company.
BTW the above rules ONLY apply to publicly traded companies.

Various people in free markets attempt to manipulate prices all the time.
When they do so in the way you describe – they nearly always fail miserably.
Look at the disasterous JP Morgan london whale.
He was engaged in massive efforts to game the commodities markets – pretty much exactly as you described – LEGALLY. But some US Hedge Fund managers understood that the direction the commodities markets were moving was WRONG, and they bet very heavily against the London Whale – and as a result he lost JP Morgan about $8B

Regardless, you can not constrain speech – not true speach, not lies, or what you think are lies based on the speaker.

So long as voters were not coerced – what INFLUENCED them, is NOT governments business.

Sorry Jay, I have no idea how good the Dutch are – but I doubt they are that good.

The yearly budget for the NSA is over $50B. NSA is just one US intelligence agency.

The entire GDP of the netherlands is only $700B
I doubt the entire intelligence aparatus of Europe equals that of the NSA.

I would further note – as is typical – you constantly say

“X says the Russians interfered.”

No one EVER provides actual evidence.
Your entire arugument is rooted in appeals to authority.

It all boils down to “trust me, I know”.

Any time you read “cozy bear” or “APT29” – you should think DISCREDITED Crowdstrike garbage.

APT29 and “Cozy Bear” are actually the names of particular hacking toolkits and the malware they produce, The names and attribution ot Russians was done by Crowdstrike.
That attribution has been thoroughly discredited.

APT29 has been associated with a variety of attacks accross Europe as well as with the DNC hack.

But the connection to Russia has been throughly discredited.

APT29 was responsible for several public hacking incidents in Europe that have ultimately been tied to China, Turkey and Iran respectively.

It is LIKELY that the APT29 toolkit WAS developed by the Russians.
But it quickly became available to most everyone.

ANYONE with the slightest knowledge of hacking can use the same Toolkit to produce a Trojan or virus.

Just because something was produce using APT29 says absolutely nothing about who produced it.

ANYONE saying that APT29 == Russia is therefore an idiot and not to be taken seriously.

That includes Cloudstrike and AVID.

Today it is not possible to determine the source of a virus or hack from anything but a naive source.

The US produced Stuxnet – we know that because of hacks of the CIA. Not by analysis of the code. StuxNet was deliberately constructed to look like it came from Israel.

Iran, China, NK, The US, most hacking groups in the world all have access to APT29 and myriads of other tools – including the CIA’s tools.

It is quite trivial to construct a hack that looks like it came from a completely different source.

Let me try this argument a different way.

If ever significant criminal in the world had access to latex gloves with the fingerprints of every other major criminal in the world, would you be able to use fingerprints to determine who committed a crime anymore ?

BTW the story on AIVD and their purported Hack of the “Cozy Bear” group is complete crap.

It contradicts critical details in the Crowdstrike report as well as the actual files from Wikileaks.
The AIVD Timeline is completely at odds with the Crowdstrike timeline.
It is also at odds with the dates and times of the email xfers.

According to CrowdStrike the APT29 infiltration of the DNC did not occur until 2015 – not 2014.
That it was mostly dormant until spring of 2016.

Nearly everyone agrees that nearly all of the DNC files were obtained in 2016.

just to be clear nearly all is not all.

It is highly likely that the files Gucifer2.0 produced to attempt to prove he is responsible for the DNC attacks came from prior attacks of the DNC – every file Guicifer2.0 produced was available to the public long before the Wikileaks email dump.

Just ot be clear it is inarguable that the DNC was hacked MULTIPLE TIMES, almost certainly by MULTIPLE sources, that were not aware of each other.

While Crowdstrikes attribution is dubious, they are correct in identifying two different hacks – one dating back to 2015 (not 2014 as AIVD claimed)

It is likely that the Crowdstrike identified hacks did produce the files that Guicifer2.0 claimed were his work – that does NOT mean Guicifer2.0 was the actual hacker.

Just to be clear AGAIN nearly all other APT29 attacks have subsequently been attributed to other nations – not Russia.

Finally despite the two hacks of the DNC – regardless of attribution, it is highly unlikely that the emails Wikileaks produced came from either of those Hacks.
It is near certain most or all of them were transfered via USB – i.e. they were an inside job and leaked not hacked.

The bottom line is the Dutch story does not hold water.
It contradicts too many know facts.

Among others it reports AVID watching ATP29 hack the DNC – 1-2 years before that hack occured. It claims to have watched the email xfers before they occured, often before the emails were written – remember many of these emails were related to the Sanders Campaign an events in the spring of 2016.

Then we have AIVD purportedly informing the FBI and US IC – which then “did nothing” waiting for CrowdStrike to call them later, and they then “did nothing” not even bothering to actually investigate on their own.

Believing this AIVD claim requires either believing the FBI is incompetent, or that they did not beleive AIVD, or take any of this seriously.

And the latter is one of you HUGE problems.
Whatever was actually going on during the election, what is increasingly self evident is that the US Intelligence community did not treat it seriously until AFTER the election.

Either they did not beleive any of this garbage, or they were incompetent, or they thought it was all inconsequential.

Putin has thrown opposition leader Alexei Navalny in jail, again.
Even right wing tRump apologists like Sen Cotton are speaking out against Putin’s oppressive regime for doing that.

Why is tRump SILENT about it?
Can you imagine any other US President remaining silent like this?
Will tRump use Putin’s behavior in having Navalny roughed up and arrested (video shows it) as excuse to sign the Senate Russian sanctions tomorrow (the deadline for it I think) and speak out like a true American against this Russian outrage against democratic rule?

tRuump on Iran:
“Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! #IranProtests”

Jay, I hope he does too and drives Putin crazy as he has done to most of us.
On top of slapping that monster Erdogon a little, which Obama did not do too much of, I would respect Trump a little more (little being the operative word).

“Iran has jailed hundreds. Russia one or two.”
You’re mistaken (read as ‘full of 💩’).
Since May, over 1,000 Protesters have been ‘detained’ (read as arrested) for demonstrating against Putin, or planning to demonstrate, or associating with demonstrators.

You honestly wish to suggest that it is less risky to protest in Iran than Russia ?

I am in no hurry to travel to Moscow to protest Putin. Clearly that is dangerous.
Being a political opponent is especially dangerous.

But most of us who live in the real world grasp that protesting in Iran is far more dangerous.

Russia does nto have a firewall depriving their citizens of unfiltered access tot he internet.
Anything that happens in Russia has a very high probability of being publicly covered and reported. Both in Russia and the US.

Russia may not have a free press per see, but Russians have access to the global free press.
Iranians DONT.

More importantly, he’s recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which it is, but which past presidents have been reluctant to admit, because they were afraid that the Palestinians would cry and stomp their feet. He has told the Palestinian Authority that he will withdraw the $300M of aid that we give to it, which goes entirely for “pay to slay,” i.e paying Palestinians to slaughter Israelis and, if possible, American Jews. The more grisly the murder, the higher the stipend ~ any terrorist who is killed or goes to prison is told that his family will be financially supported.

As long as we provide incentives and cash to the Palestinians (who live in an imaginary nation-state that doesn’t exist) there will never be peace. And that’s just how the Palestinian Authority wants it.

If Trump is gonna be tough, let him be tough on Abbas. Obama says he told Putin to “Cut it out” during the election….I’m sure Vlad quaked in his boots…if that even happened. Russia has its own internal strife. Putin’s been knocking off his enemies for years…funny, I don’t recall Obama ever uttering a peep about it while he was president.

Palestinians want a right of return to Israel.
i.e. They do not really want their own country,
They really want to take over israel.

Israel has:
Offered to make Jerusalem an “international city”.
Offered to walk away from all settlements in palestinian teritory.

They are never going to grant a right of return – they would quickly become an Arab country,
There are millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the east and west banks.

Palestinians are a huge minority in Jordan and the jordanians would throw them out in an instant if they were free to go to Israel.

All those offers are not on the table at the moment.

I have long wondered why Israel did not just unilaterally withdrawl its claim to the west bank and Gaza, and say FU, You can have your own nation – or not as you choose – but this is it, you figure out how to make it work.

There would be international condemnation briefly – only lefties can actually complain about giving people independence if they want it.

Set aside for a moment that Trump is a narcissistic, bad-tempered, lazy, and unprepared president, and consider this: the State of the Union is about to be given by a sexual predator who lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes.

Priscilla ” I hope that “real life” turns some of these kids into conservatives as they get older, or we’re screwed.”

Priscilla, real life has created the stupidity that is being reflected in these interviews. The first task is to provide these kids with some real life experiences so they get their damn faces out of smart devices and turn their brains into smart devices. But as this world becomes more technical each year, I believe peoples brains will become less technical.

There is a graphic going arround Twitter – I have no Idea if it is true, but it purports to represent the results of the 2016 Election – but ONLY among white millenials.
In that graphic Clinton won California and Utah, and lost the entire rest of the country.

Regardless the left fixates on the demographics of the youth, and minorities in the beleif they are constant.

The more affluent a family is – particularly in the lower quintiles the more likely it is to vote republican. Regardless of race or gender.

The older people are the more likely they are to vote republican.

When people leave the cities – they become more republican.
When the get married – they become more republican.
When they have kids – the become more republican.

We have seen the same happen in the past with other groups – the irish and the itallians were solid democrats a long time ago. As were unions and working class voters.

These are no longer true.

The younger generation today is quite odd.
On the one hand they have less negative – even positive views of socialism, on the other they do not know what it is and when asked specific policy questions they tend to be incredibly libertarian – the most libertarain by policies of any cohort ever recorded.
They just do not know what libertarian is.

They are the most entitled generation ever – but they are the least generous to others ever.

My point is take care with demographic claims – accoriding to the demographics of democratic inevitabiliy – Trump should have lost in a landslide.

Purportedly the “missing Texts” have been found. Regardless, as KS points out – 5 month’s of texts missing from 1000’s of FBI phones is itself criminal negligence on the part of the FBI, which is a legally mandated record keeper.

twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/955501595310964736

Apparently the delay in the IG’s report is that there are Text’s beyond those of Strzok and Page that are damning and the IG investigation has gone significantly beyond Page and Strzok.

Comey apparently asked McCabe to recuse himself from the Clinton investigation BEFORE the public was aware his wife was receiving large political donations from the clintons.

We can spend 2 years chasing nothing with respect to Trump and you never grow tired.
But when the slightest evidence that if was all a setup appears you are not interested.

It has already been reported that Comey arranged the meeting with Trump to brief him on the Steele Dossier primarily as a means to get the Steele Dossier and the at that point non-existant Trump/Russian investigation into the news.

We now know that McCabe setup Priebus in much the same way – asking for a meeting with Preibus to provide him with the information that everything the Press was reporting was “fake”, and then when Priebus asks if the FBI can say in public what it told him in private, McCabe goes to the press and claims the FBI is being illegally pressured by the WhiteHouse to squelch an investigation that the FBI told the Whitehouse had no substance.

This is the same McCabe who lied to Flynn, setting up a meeting between Strzok and Flynn that was supposed to be a security briefing – meaning Strzok providing information to Flynn as NSA, but turned into Strzok interviewing Flynn on his exchanges with Kislyak.

Just to be clear ALL Of these meetings took place.

We also have testimony as to what was discussed at these meetings that confirms what I have written above.

Yet each of these meetings was reported by the Press in a way completely different from what actually occured.

Further these meetings were one-one. Only two people knew what was said in each.
Given that it makes no sense for Trump, Prirbus, or Flynn to have leaked to the press something harmful to themselves that did not happen – that leaves Comey and McCabe as the sources of the false leaks – or someone they discussed private WhiteHouse meetings with, or it means the press just made the stories up.

I do not care what explanation you pick.
All of them show Trump and the rest of us being setup and played.

“Really? It’s only ‘criminal’ if they were “intentionally” removed for a criminal purpose.”

BZZT, Wrong.
Comey pushed this garbage with the Clinton email mess.

Lets start with simple crimes of negligence that pretty much everyone agrees on.

If you get drunk off your gourd and get into your car and run into a school bus killing several kids – you will be charged (and convicted) with whatever your states equivalent of “criminally negligent homicide”.

Mens Rea – “guilty mind”, is a requirement for MOST state criminal offenses.
It is not for all.

It is merely necescary to intend to do something WRONG, when your actions otherwise meet the elements of a crime.

Beyond that juries are free to infer intent from actions.
Brandishing a weapon is proof of intent.

Failing to perform a required duty is prima fascia evidence of intent.

While I would personally go with Hatch and substantially increase the requirement for intent in Federal crimes,

At the same time for many crimes – a strong requirement fo intent defeats the purpose of the entire law.

If you dictate that not only must the FBI keep records, but that failing to keep government records, or removing government records or impairing access to govenrment records is a crime.
That crime has no meaning, if a failure to perform a required duty does nto constitute commission of the crime.

Less was made of it, But Clinton was ALSO guilty of numerous federal records keeping requirements – some of which were criminal.

Sandy Berger was found guilty of a crime merely for removing a few records from the National Archives for his own reference in writing a book.

Jay, if everything with the investigation by the FBI was all above board and on the up and up, why is Andrew McCabe suddenly taking “terminal” leave.

I just spent time in two time warps, one in MSNBC warp to get their take and it is Trump pushing out McCabe. Then I watched Foxs news (to be fair and balanced) and they are reporting the IG internal investigation memo is being released today after a review of the house memo and due to the timing, it is thought to be a “you’re out, either by your own decision or your fired due to issues during the clinton investigation”

I think I preferred when we had government like we had when J Edgar Hoover ran Washington and no one gave a damn.

If everything is above board why has DOJ/FBI fought like hell to turn anything over to:
Congress, or to FOIA requests ?

There is no right to privacy with respect to government.

There is no “national security” privilege.
The executive is permitted to restrict classified materials to those committees that are properly setup to handle classified documents. And to require that the senators/representatives and their staff that have access have security clearances.

There is a very narrow executive privilege – but that only applies to advice givern directly tot he president.

There is no “need to know” restriction with regard to congress.
congress is entitled to whatever it asks for.

There is no “ongoing investigation” priviledge with respect to congress.
Congress is free to screw up ongoing investigations to its hearts content.
And it did so with Iran-Contra.

DOJ/FBI/…. are free to tell congress – it is a really bad idea for you to ask for this information.
But constitutionally Congress has total oversight of the executive.

There is NOTHING the executive branch can do that is protected from congresses prying eyes.

I would further note that nearly everything that Congress is after poses no risk.

Unless as an example the FBI has a currently active SPY in the Kremlin (and that would be a CIA asset not an FBI one so the scenario is impossible). There is nothing that could be on the FISA warrants for the Trump campaign that would expose anything ongoing.

Lets say that FBI actually had an inside source in the Trump campaign.
While that has been pretty much ruled out – lets assume it.

Unless that person is currently in the whitehouse and currently spying on Trump
There is no basis for failing to disclose.

If the source of informaiton is NSA mass surveilance – then there is already a problem.

The NSA can not search for information on US Persons, and as a result of searches for foreigners it produces information on US persons it must “mask it” before forwarding it.

The FBI can not search the NSA mass data collection databases without a warrant.

Put simply one of the reasons that Republicans are starting to smell blood is that there is no possible source for the information used to get the FISA warrants that is not going to expose corruption in the FBI. Even if they did not use the Steele Dossier they near certainly used something else even more improper.

Trump is not publicly demanding that anyone be fired, although he has made his feelings about McCabe very clear.

This is the most prudent move. If he were to fire any of the people that may have been involved in what looks like an attempt to overthrow him, the press would portray it as a Saturday Night Massacre (or Sunday night, as Jay prefers).

Once this memo, and the supporting source documents are released, not to mention the IG report, there will be a public demand for these people to be fired, or arrested. No doubt, the Trump-haters will consider it all “political”.

Priscilla “Once this memo, and the supporting source documents are released, not to mention the IG report, there will be a public demand for these people to be fired, or arrested. No doubt, the Trump-haters will consider it all “political”.”

I have been paying a little more attention to the news with this story breaking along with the memo issue. Yesterday I read an article (tried to find it to attach but could not this morning) where a former prosecutor associated with the Democrats has said he is going to try and get Nunes charged with leaking classified information if this document is released. We have seen many of the democrats saying how this document is nothing new, has nothing in it or has too many confidential names and investigations to allow it to be released.

I have thought maybe Nunes is just blowing smoke. This is a diversion from the real issue, the Trump investigation. But now my thinking is there is really something there, it is going to expose a lot of dirty laundry and support a lot of what Trump has been saying about the career investigators and that is why the Democrats are doing everything in their power to stop the release.

Just as Jay keep harping on Trumps taxes and releasing them if there is nothing there, so too is #releasethememo if there is nothing there.

And if Trump decides not to allow this to be released, then that just adds to the theory that there is something to the investigation of Trump that he does not want released and the media will have a circus for weeks asking why he did not release it.

There is a counter Democratic memo, written by @RepAdamSchiff & staff (who unlike Nunes actually read the underlying evidence) that highlights the misleading nature of the #NunesMemo. The Republican majority on the committee voted to suppress the Dem memo yesterday.

Jay, you have already decided what the findings will be. Trump committed Treason and Clinton is as clean as a 15 year old virgin princess. I get that. Think what you want.

I am waiting for some proof, DOCUMENTED proof that appears in an indictment that states Trump committed a crime ( other than some jury rigged obstruction charge) and that begins the impeachment process.

Like I commented a day or two ago, I am sorry I can not be as apoletic in my response to these investigations like you, but I dont buy the MSNBC brand of justice just like I can not buy the Fox News “fake news” position when it come to this.I am waiting for proof.

The house is following an established legal process for releasing the memo.
They is no means to charge anyone.

The position of the left is idiotic.

IT rests on a basic missunderstanding of what classified means.

The presumption is that the information generated by government belongs to the public.

Those things denied to the people are the rare exception not the rule.
But even when something is denied tot he public – the courts are free to reverse on that choice.
The President is unilaterally free to reverse on that choice.
The house and senate as bodies are free to reverse on that choice.

You can charge an individual representative for releasing classifief information – if they do so as an individual.

You can not do so if they do so as part of their official role. ‘

When congress releases something that the administration does not wish made public the punishment is that the administration becomes more reluctant to share.

This has been discussed because of the immunity confered by the speach and debate clause.

Right now Nunes could go to the floor of the house and read the memo without any legal consequence. But doing so would significantly worsen the houses relationship with the executive departments.

That is why the house is following a procedure – by doing so they make clear this is unusual.
At the same time they also make clear their authotity for oversight is ABSOLUTE.

You’re going to get way worse than Hoover going forward, Ron.
You’re going to see a tRumpian take over of Federal Law Enforcement.

FBI Directors and their teams are expected to serve long terms to ensure independence from the politicians they hold accountable. Firing Comey, forcing out McCabe, and reassigning others is a purge of independent law enforcement leaders and an effort to place Trump above the law.

I don’t know this guy, but a lot of Reps, including Trey Gowdy, have a lot of respect for Mueller and the FBI. Sorry, although some agents may be highly biased against Trump or Clinton, or Obama or _______, this is an overblown smoke screen to cover Trump’s fat ass.
And yes, I would say the same thing if the investigation would have been directed at Hillary.

Dduck, since he does not hold any position in any agency of government today, does he have better information than reporters from MSNBC to Fox and all points inbetween?

If not, how does he know there was not sifficient cause to fire, forceout or whatever took place on McCabe. We all have a pretty good idea that politics may have played a part in Clinton jkt facing charges and that is still open for futher action, but we do not have good infornation about McCabe.

This is the problem with our news and access to most information. One can only guess the environment had the Bernstein and Woodward been investigating Watergate under todays environment. We get bits and pieces. Liberal news licks the liberal kernels from the past 24 hours of news and conservative news picks the conservative kernels to report. Nothing is unreported until facts are complete like we had with Watergate.

And my fear is this will go on for months longer and we will be futher divided because it fits nicely into the political environment of divide and conquer. And once the House flips and Pelosi takes over, we will have another two years of continued investigations and constant divisive news with no acceltible conclusion to any of this.

While Muellers staff apointments reak of political bias,
There is no special other reason to think that Mueller is pro-democrat.

Every SC is a head hunter. You appoint them and they will view themselves as a failure if they do not come home with a scalp.

That is why McCarthy’s article on Rosenstein is so important.

You want an aggressive SC. BUT you also want him superived by someone who is going to prevent him from going off the reservation.
Rosenstein is not that person. He gave Mueller and illegal and unconstitution brief and then disappeared.

Mueller must be subject to review – and that review is supposed to be Rosenstein.

The last issue is competence. the more I learn about Mueller he is not competent.
That is not a judgement on his political biases. But his job performance.

He is highly prone to botch high profile cases.
That is not what we want here.

We do not want people arguing over Mueller for decades.

As a separate matter it is crystal clear that DOJ/.FBI approached Clinton and Trump RADICALLY different.

Jay, you keep regurgitating the MSNBC stories. Others can regurgitate the Fox News line.
I will wait until proof comes out that Trump actually directed the removal of McCabe today or that Wray decided that the Inspector General report ( that we may never see) was so damaging to the FBI that McCabe had to go immediately.

It could also be a combination that it was negative and could be held secret while McCabe stayed another four weeks, but Session was putting on so much pressure he did not want to wait and the PR was so negative from conservatives that going was best for the FBI.

However, if there was nothing ” there ” and the Dossier was used to get a FISA warrant based on collusion between the FBI, Clintons and Steele and that is present in the IG report, then as you say “You’re going to get way worse than Hoover going forward, ” IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED!

I apologize to you for not drinking the cool aide you keep serving. When your tray of goodies comes with documented proof that something impeachable has happened, then I will gladly jump on your band wagon. Until that time, I will agree with you that Trump is an ass, right up there in my personal disdain for “The Bitch”, but I can’t support impeachment based on being an ass or shithead. That is not defined as high crimes or misdemeanors.

Well, the word shithead wasn’t in the language when the constitution was assembled, but the idea of it is included in the “misdemeanor” language for impeachment.

Madison during those discussions when they were writing the constitution maintained misdemeanors were commissions or omissions in office that, though not ‘criminally cognizable’ were impeachable, and as example cited the ‘wanton removal from office of meritorious officers’ as an act which would “render the President subject to impeachment.”

If Madison was alive now, he’d be calling for the Shithead’s Impeachment for Comey, and others he’s purging for political reasons.

Jay, please provide the link from the FBI, IG ,DOJ or any other law enforcement agency that provides information for the basis for the” Impeachment for Comey, and others he’s purging for political reasons. ”

I missed that information.

In my America, you are innocent until proven guilty. In your America, you are guilty until proven innocent.

Yes, Ron, in my America when it comes to elected personages who have so much control over our lives, when they’re looking extremely guilty, they are ASSUMED guilty until proven otherwise.

I would think you would agree with that premise.
It’s the operative default throughout much of the corporate world, and University world and medical world: if people at the top APPEAR to be involved in unsavory behavior, and wont provide evidence of innocence, they get the Bye-Bye wave.

Come on Ron, you think he’s a loser, likely guilty of numerous shady enterprise. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, why duck the responsibility of dumping him?

Yes, I think he is more than just a loser. I did not support him when he was running for the nomination, I did not support him in the general election and I would not support him in the primaries for 2020. I would not support him in 2020, but the democrats are not a viable alternative because they are much worse than the GOP with Trump. There ar better alternatives.

But what I think has nothing to do with the constitution, And I know, “Come on Ron, he appears to be guilty so we need to do something to get him out of office”, but the constitution, which I believe is the basis for our government, provides a clear path to his removal. Just because you believe the liberal message about him and I believe something in the middle between the liberal crap and the conservative shit in the news does not provide the required information to bring charges that may lead to an impeachment and removal from office.

At some point this may come about, but it has been a year and nothing has been provided that would indicate to me that that information has been found. The talk now is the investigation is focusing on obstruction of justice, but how do you prove obstruction of justice when no there was there to be obstructed.

I would be much more open to your positions on the firing of Comey had Comey not obstructed justice in his decision to not bring charges against Clinton when there was clear and present information that she broke the law concerning, e-mails. It has been reported in the last couple days there were messages between her and Obama on her private e-mail server concerning government business but the FBI did not identify those until the investigation had hit the point it has in the last couple days. They had them, they just left that out of Comey’s investigation.

And no one has provided me proof that Trump ordered McCabe fired. No one has said Sessions ordered him fired. They have said both wanted him terminated, but Wray did not do that until after seeing the IG report on the FBI investigation of Clinton.

Sorry, but I refuse to circumvent the constitution, no matter who and why.

You say ” in my America when it comes to elected personages who have so much control over our lives, when they’re looking extremely guilty, they are ASSUMED guilty until proven otherwise.” So Trump looks guilty, so he needs to be removed. Democrats are guilty because they are subverting the constitution and the oath they took to support and defend the laws of the country through their positions on illegal aliens. Shouldn’t they be removed also?

If “looking guilty” is grounds for removal, then “being guilty” should also be grounds for legal action to remove them from office.

dduck “RonP, re Gowdy: Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs,”

Sorry you lost me on this response, looks like their was more after the “,” following “affairs”.

Regardless, I have said a couple times already in previous post. I will wait to blow up my ammunition about Russia, collusion, Trump, Clinton, Comey, McCabe and anyone else associated with the current or past investigations. Just because the liberal news is loaded with “trumps guilt” and conservative news is loaded with “Clinton guilt”, I will only say there is going to be a decision and when that is made, then I will side with Jay if charges are brought on collusion. As for Comey and McCabe, based on conservative news they appear to be as guilty as trump appears to be in liberal news.

The Trump admin has notified Congress that last year’s bipartisan Russia sanctions bill is serving as a “deterrent” and as such, specific sanctions aren’t needed at this time. From a State Dept spox: pic.twitter.com/rwkd6Vzh66

“It is not the business of government to decide who we should trade with.”

That’s your opinion.
The rest of the world doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your opinion.
98% of Americans (my casual estimate) doesn’t give an ant’s anus about your opinion.
And the history of modern nations doesn’t subscribe to your buggy trade opinions.

But soldier on! March to your own music like a wind up tin soldier with a frozen leg. its FUN to watch you keep turning in circles.

Government is FORCE and you may not use force willy nilly or even because alot of people want to.

It is more than an oppinion, it is at the root of ALL morality.

If 98% of americans wish to execute you – that does not entitle them to do so.

You seem to be of the delusion that reality, facts, morality, the way the world works, actual human nature are all matters of “oppinion” – they are NOT.

Everything is not and “oppinion”.

You are little different from evangelical creationists, who think that because they wish the past to be different than what it was – that wishing it so makes it so.

History tells us many things – amoung others what works and what does not.

Government interfering with the non-violent acts of others DOES NOT WORK!!!

This is not about marching to a different drummer – this is about not being a leming and fallowing garbage over a Cliff.

Your “oppinion” – is exactly that – an oppinion, with no support in facts, or history or human nature.

I am very interested in the history of nations – both modern and otherwise – that is where we learn what works and what does not.

When nations have litterally blockaded each other – the impacts have been negligible.

During WWII the allies did everything in their power to deprive Germany of oil.
They drove them out of the mideast and destroyed the oilfields in eastern europe,
They littlerally blockaded the axis. And yet in the last year of the war German war production was as high as ever and the available fuel was as great as ever.

If during wartime with military force constraining trade – you stil have only small effect on a nation – why do you think that peace time sanctions routinely ignored are going to be effective.

Just to be clear – I am not saying that sanctions have ZERO effect.
I am saying they are incredibly expense and their effect is small compared to their cost.

Further Sanctions tend to bring a nation together. Nothing is more effective at unifying a people behind a leader than being able to point at a common enemy.

There is a similar story regarding Comey’s meeting with Trump after the election to review the Steele Dossier with him.

Essentially that there was no reason for the FBI director to meet with the president elect to discuss a Dossier that the FBI did not beleive was credible.

That the only purpose for the meeting was to be able to run the story in the Press.

I would remind you that it is McCabe who lied to Flynn and set him up for the meeting with Strzok – that was supposed to the Strzok reviewing security protocols with Flynn, not Strzok interviewing Flynn on the Russian’s.

I would also note that Trump requested Comey state publicly what he had told Trump privately 3 times. Comey himself testified to that under oath.

There is a “narative” that is getting missed.

The FBI Knew after the election – there was no “there there”, that they had nothing to investigate.
We know that based on the facts.
We know that from Comey’s testimony
We know that based on the Strzok texts,
We are likely to have that reinforced by the Nunes Memo.

The point is the DOJ/FBI were “investigating” something they KNEW had no substance.

The objective was not to engage in law enforcement. It was to keep the collusion story in the news.

One of the stories floating now is that McCabe was a significant source of leaks.

We already know that Comey was admittedly responsible for a few, and likely responsible for more.

Not only are these crimes. But what we appear to have is a campaign of deliberately orchestrated FALSE leaks for the purpose of keeping the Russia/Collusion story alove and discrediting Trump.

That is NOT the job of the FBI/DOJ.

This particular McCabe story is pretty damning. Even if we do not know for sure what was said in the meeting with Priebus, only Preibus or McCabe can credibly speak to what was said.

The media got the story from somewhere. Either from Preibus – which makes zero sense, or from McCabe or from someone McCabe talked to.

No matter what the leak ties back to McCabe.
The leak is improper possibly criminal even if true and certainly criminal and improper if McCabe was feeding the press false stories about his job.

This also ties to the assertions regarding Trump’s demands for “loyalty”.

People keep painting that is troubling and wrong.

It is the opposite. Incidents like this demonstrate why.

The president is the source of all executive power.
There is no authority or power in the executive independent of the president – regardless of assorted claims of independence.

If you are a government employee and you can not in good conscience do as the President directs, you are obligated to resign. The president is entitled to your loyalty.

Meaning you will do as directed, you will not undermine the president from within, and if you can not do that you will resign.

That does not preclude disagreeing. It does not require obedience when you believe the president is acting unconstitutionally.

But it DOES require that you can not subvert the president from inside the executive branch.

Every person is free to oppose the president – vigorously if they desire.
But not from inside the executive branch.

Trump asked for “loyalty”. He was actually entitled to it.

Comey, McCabe and others were free to join the #resistance if they felt that was morally necessary. But doing so required LEAVING the executive branch.

Loyalty does nto mean you can not oppose someone.
But it does mean you can not do so using the power and authority that COMES FROM THEM.

And if they voted in the same numbers to execute you would that be sufficient justification ?

Again government is force.
The support of a super majority of people is NECESCARY but NOT sufficient to use force.

You referenced Madison before – try reading him.

“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

The will of the people is a requirement for the excercise of government power – force.
It is not alone sufficient.

Not only does madison tell us that, but so does history – whether the french revolution or Nazi Germany, or The Killing Fields of cambodia, or Rwanda.

The people – even a majority even a super majority – Hitler won a plebiscite making him a limitless dictator in 1938 by over 80%.

“How do you make the dumb leap from the Doofus in Office ignoring a bipartisan bill they voted on, to them voting to execute me? ”

How ? The logical technique is called “reductio ad absurdem. It is a legitimate means of falsifying arguments.
You made an argument that asserted obediance to the will of the majority as a principle.
I provided a hypothetical and asked you if you still felt the same.

I would note that Socrates really did self execute to fullfill the will of the majority – so the hypothetical is not at all a leap or batty.

Now now, Priscilla, be careful of accusations that will come back and bite you on the butt.
You’re either confused or misinformed about the Sanctions timeline.

There were already sanctions in place before the Russian interfearance in the election. The follow-up bill (with massive bipartisan support, as noted above) was for additional sanctions to punish Russia for meddling in our election. By refusing to add sanction penalties for that meddling, tRump is once again DISMISSING the interfearance, because that would be a tacit admission they helped him get elected.

Get it? Too confusing for you? Rather ignore the facts?

Look at it this way: A theif is locked away in jail, serving a term for robbery. While in jail evidence is produced showing he’s a counterfeiter as well. By your wacky sense of justice he shouldn’t be prosecuted for that because he’s already punished, serving time for the earlier robbery.

And why did tRump substitute the Forbes list of Russian billionaires and exclude the specific list of Putin Pals accused of nefarious business practices on his behalf? Ya think it could be because tRump has had business dealings with them in the past, or present?

I place very little trust in media stories that are hearsay.
I do not want to know what Bloomberg says, someone said Wray said.

Dir. Wray has the ability to speak for himself.
The press has been abysmal with respect to this 2nd hand hearsay.
Either the press has been lying, their sources have been lying or the people the sources are quoting are deliberately spreading disinformation.

Regardless, today it is a pretty good bet that what a story reads “Source says important person said” that it is false.

This is from the FBI’s press release.

“The F.B.I. was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the bureau said in a statement. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

Essentially the FBI is saying on cursory review that the memo is incomplete and does not paint the full picture.

That is to be expected summarizing thousands of pages of classified documents into 4 pages.

The FBI is free to offer its own response suplimenting the memo, and free to provide further documentation confirming or refuting points.

I would note that nothing in Wray’s statement would bar releasing the Memo.

There is a world of difference between “I do not like what it says” and it compromises existing investigations, sources and methods or national security

My sugestion would be that if FBI does nto have an objection to the release of the memo based on sources and methods, national security or interfering with an ongoing investigation,
Then Trump should approve the release of the Memo and direct the FBI to prepare its own response addressing whatever it feels are the memo’s shortcomings.

I think Trump should FURTHER order the appropriate authority – outside the FBI, to review all the source material, to declassify whatever can be declassified, and to redcats what MUST be redacted and release as much as possible,
so that we can all determine the credibility of these memo’s and the actual conduct of the FBI.

The best response to speach you do not like – is more speach – not enforced silence.

Rather than your, the left’s and the presses a priori condemnation fo the accuacy of something you have not seen, why no wait until you have seen it and until sufficient information is available to assess its credibility.

This is from the sanction bill. tRump HAS has authority not to add new sanctions ONLY if he has followed up with the required information stated in the language below. And he hasn’t.

SEC. 231. IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS WITH RESPECT TO PERSONS ENGAGING IN TRANSACTIONS WITH THE INTELLIGENCE OR DEFENSE SECTORS OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

(a) IN GENERAL.

[Within 6 months,] the President shall impose … sanctions … with respect to a person the President determines knowingly … engages in a significant transaction with a person that is part of, or operates for or on behalf of, the defense or intelligence sectors of the Government of the Russian Federation….

(b) APPLICATION OF NEW SANCTIONS.

The President may waive the initial application of sanctions under subsection (a) with respect to a person only if the President submits to the appropriate congressional committees—

(1) a written determination that the waiver—

(A) is in the vital national security interests of the United States; or

(B) will further the enforcement of this title; and

(2) a certification that the Government of the Russian Federation has made significant efforts to reduce the number and intensity of cyber intrusions conducted by that Government.

(c) DELAY OF IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS.

The President may delay the imposition of sanctions under subsection (a) with respect to a person if the President certifies to the appropriate congressional committees … that the person is substantially reducing the number of significant transactions described in subsection (a) in which that person engages.

Well in Washington there can be 50 clouds in the sky and part of the people will say it is partly cloudy and the rest will say it is partly sunny. They will argue about that for weeks, they will hire a scientific investigative company at 10 million to research which it is, that company will issue a report and then for years the argument will take place that this company was biased and further study needs to take place before a final decision is made.

As for your issue with Wray, both could have been true. He may not have had the information at the time he threatened to resign. he may have said if this guy is to be fired, I will make that decision, not the AG or the president because I am the one making the decisions of who works for me. Then after seeing the IG report and/or the memo, he had information that warranted removal and he made that decision himself.

Whatever happen(ed)(s) there are clouds in the Washington sky and the argument about when, who and why something is taking place in this investigation will last for many more months. It has to, because there is an election coming up and turmoil is the lifeblood of the party out of power to get power back.

In House Judiciary Committee and #GOP just shut down Dem request to view the underlying classified docs for the #NunesMemo. Republicans also won't release the Democratic memo. Why? Because they know the actual facts decimate the misleading and inaccurate #NunesMemo.

It is certain that the smallest errors in this memo – even small fake errors will be instantly the focus of the news as soon as it is released.

Whatever ti says the effort to discredit it will be enormous.

Ultimately the accuracy will be determined by history – and likely relatively soon.

Gowdy in particular wants as much fo the supporting documents as possible released.
Purportedly it is extremely well annotated – so if you have access to the classifed documents you can find the specific documents that support each point in the memo.

Dave, not sure where I heard this. Supposedly Wray went to the capital and reviewed the memo. Then the IG and some high level FBI attorney reviewed the memo . They reported the memo was factually correct and did not have any problem with using the information contained within it for administrative decisions. Shortly after McCabe was gone.

In all matters related to Trump the overwhelming majority of rumors have proven false.
One of the things this mess has established is the press has little credibility.
That whatever “government sources” means it does not mean credibility.
That the media not only is not checking sources, but not rejecting information from sources with a record of bias and error.

It is wise to await confirmation of most anything. reported.

I have observed that reports favorable to Trump sometimes prove correct.
Those disfavorable to him pretty much always prove false.

The FBI’s opponion on the “factual correctness” of the memo, is not a basis to prevent its release.

Frankly I think based on Wray’s statement Nunes can now release it unilaterally.
Wray did not assert priviledge.

Factual correctness is something for the rest of us to decide.
Hopefully the FBI will make enough evidence available to us to assess that.

Further if you read what Wray said – he did not say it was factually incorrect.
He said it was incomplete and that could lead to factually incorrect conclusions.

Wray essentially confirmed that the facts alleged in the memo are correct.

In more sophisticated language all he said was what you said earlier “Cherry Picking”

Cherry picking is ONLY a useful challenge to conclusions about trends.
When you say data is “cherry picked” you are ceeding that the data used is accurate, just not complete, and therefore suggusting a trend (conclusion) that might not be true.

Language matters. I know you do not grasp that.

Lets say that a bank is robbed and 4 armed men come in, and one shoots a guard and they all take the money but are caught on exiting the bank.

In the trial of the shooter the prosecution shows bank video ONLY of the shooter firing at the guard.

That is cherry picking.

It is an incomplete picture that does not tell the entire story, and might lead you to some false conclusions,
things like – there was no bank robbery – the only evidence you saw was of a shooting.
Or there was only one person involved.

What is indisputable is that the shooter shot the guard.
That is cherry picked, incomplete and also true.

I think the Memo will be a fizzle – because it will do little but confirm what is alredy fairly well supported.

I think that Goldberg is wrong about the Steele Dossier not being relied on in FISA warrants.
Based on the Hints from Trey Gowdy the truth appears to be:

The FBI made little or no attempt to verify it.
The FBI relied on it heavily in FISA warrants – but not exclusively.
The FBI did NOT disclose to the courts the source of the information.
That is actually legally of great importance. When law enforcement asks for a warrant they are REQUIRED to swear to the reliability of the sources they use.
The FBI Knew at the time it used the Steele Dossier that it was paid for by the Democrats.

BTW Carter Page did not “take the fifth” – he was interviewed under oath for something like 7hours. He used the 5th amendment to preclude providing some documents to the committees.

Regardless I do thing the Memo is being overhyped – not because it does not say lots of very bad things – but because it says little we have not known for months
It is merely well sourced confirmation

Equally important is releasing as much of the supporting documents as possible.

Gowdy is pressing heavily for that – but that requires the DOJ/FBI to cooperate
If Schiff wanted to be useful he could join in that effort.

OK please explain to me if there was nothing illegal that took place and no Department of Justice action to be taken, how do you obstruct something that never existed?

Looks to me that Comey and McCabe, along with their other minions obstructed justice when there was actually something illegal that Clinton did and they stopped any further action.

Is it just me that thinks the law needs to be applied equally, no matter who it is? And does there not need to be a final report to create an indictment to begin legal actions, either in court or in congress?

Why continue with the investigations if there is not a requirement that an actual crime may have been committed and the documentation supports that position?

It used to be a legal principle that it was nearly impossible to prosecute for actions arrising out of an unfounded complaint.

i.e.
you can not resist “false arrest” .
you can not have your property confiscated as proceeds of a crime that you are not convicted of.
You can not be convicted of lying to the police about a crime that did not occur.

Both the left and the right – though the left more so, have been erroding these protections for almost 100 years.

Obstruction of Justice is a crime. It has a definition. Just as it does not fit the conduct of Trump,
it also does not fit the conduct of McCabe and Comey.

Both McCabe and Comey and others appear to be guilty of abuse of power crimes.
Those are misconduct under color of authority.

Further Comey in particular potentially faces a number of charges – including perjury.
Particularly related to the Clinton investigation.

He testified that the decision not to recommend prosecution of Clinton was not made until the day before his press conference, and that he made it on his own.
It is obvious that is false. Though that is more difficult to establish as perjury.

Easier but more trivial is he testified on several occasions about his meetings with Pres. Obama.
Claiming there were only 1 or two. But Strzoks texts refer to Comey having several meetings with Obama on the Clinton Email mess that he denied having in is testimony.
These should be easy to prove.

Nixon arranged the payment of money to criminal defendents in return for their silence.
That is the root of the Obstruction of Justice Charge.

Bill Clinton’s obstruction of justice involved the use of Arkansas State Police to silence potential witnesses.

Nothing that has come up regarding Trump is obstruction of justice.

The Left constantly gets this wrong about all kinds of things.

You can not turn a legal action into a crime by drawing conclusions about the “intent” of the person doing it.

If Trump can fire comey – then it can NEVER be obstruction to fire Comey.

FURTHER “Obstruction of Justice” has a legal meaning – it REQUIRES interference in a court proceding – at the very least interferance in a grand jusry proceeding it is NOT obstruction of justice to put your thumb in the eye of a prosecutor. It is not obstruction of justice to fail to cooperate to the satisfaction of investigators or prosecutors in their investigation of you.
There was no legal proceeding to obstruct until Mueller convened a grand jury.

Obstruction of Justice would have to be actions that interfered with that grand jury – not with Mueller – that requires more than lack of cooperation – that would be acts like those of Nixon or Clinton to secure the silence of witnesses.

Bottom Line you do not have obstruction of Justice.

It Trump were not president and Mueller tried to charge Obstruction any reasonable judge would dismiss the charges out of hand.

FINALLY, you NOW have a huge problem. It is increasingly evident that there NEVER was sufficient basis for ANY investigation. That there is not and never was an actual crime alleged.

This is NOT the USSR, We do not operate according to the Beria meme “bring me the man and I will find the crime”

It can not be obstruction or anything else to interfere with government actors criminally abusing their power under color of law.

This is not about Trump. It is not even about the misbehavior of Strzok and others at the FBI/DOJ.

But it is about law and government. The left has spent decades converting law from a logical narrow system into a subjective amporphous blob of garbage. It is messes like this that arrise when laws no longer mean what they say but are applied to attempt to get specific ends.

Do you think it is EVER reasonable to take someones property, or convict them of some procedural violation when they are INNOCENT of any underlying crime ? When the crime purportedly being investigated never occured ?

I hope you do not. Because if you do you are giving law enforcement incredible power.
You are giving them the ability to use their power to push you arround until they can coerce you into lashing back and committing a crime. You are giving them the power to take everything you have without proving any wrongdoing.

I oppose the war on drugs and laws like asset forfeiture laws because they do exactly that.
I oppose Sessions as AG because he supports that – which is actually lawlessness.

I oppose you garbage attempts to manufacture obstruction of justice for exactly the same reasons.

Your claim that Trump Obstructed Justice by doing anything that he was constitutionally empowered or otherwise legally allowed to do is itself LAWLESSNESS.

Advocating for charges or impeachment on that basis is TOTALITARIAN.
It means that you and anyone who shares that view can NEVER be trusted with power.

It means that you are personally far worse than you claim Trump is.
It means that you are prepared to use power and pervert the law to your desired ends.
It means you are a tyrant and a criminal.

This is not about Trump, this is about you.

One of the worst things that Trump does is spout about using the power he has as president to punish his enemies. IT is the one and only one thing Trump has done as president that is thoroughly lawless. Thus far he has done nothing but TALK about doing so.
Should he ever ACT – he must go.
Though I would note that FDR and LBJ and Obama did ACT to use the power of government to punish enemies.

So someone in the Trump administration got the US govenrment out of the business of doing something unconstitutional that is ultimately the job of journalists and the left goes bonkers.

I think pretty much all of us grasp that Russia is a cleptocracy.
I do not think we need the State Department doing the New York Times job.

I think anyone doing business with Russia – and that would include Trump and Clinton, and Obama knows they are doing business with crooks.

That would also include you – should you decide to do business with Russia.

I do not think we need the government to tell us what we already know.

It is not the role of the US government to “name and shame”. Nor foreign oligarches, not anyone.

If there is probable cause that a crime has been committed in the US then our govenrment should investigate and prosecute.

Otherwise you are doing nothing more than trying to convert your particular personal values into law. You are no different from those on the religious right trying to institutionalize their religious values into law.

I tried to watch, but gave up after five minutes. I’m sorry, I have such a weak stomach and am very cynical. Trump’s “style” is so offensive to my NYC ears and eyes, and has been for over twenty years. 😦

dduck, I give you kudos for trying. I have not watched a SOTU speech for many moons. Sure as hell was not BO. Think it was one of 43’s first couple. All they provide is a campaign speech for those giving it, exercise for those jumping up and down almost wetting their pants in excitement from what is said when their party president gives the speech or a chorus of boos or negative inflections from the opposing side. Then they have their sob stories sitting in the chambers to score points, for one side or the other. Just a big bunch of political crap that screws up a night of TV. At least North Carolina and Clemson basketball was on when all the pre-speech crap was taking place and then another SEC basketball game after that during the speech. Why listen to it when you can listen to any of the main media news outlets and they tell you all day long bits and pieces so by the time it is given, you have heard most of the important parts. You just avoid the 30-40 minutes of clapping interruptions.

I thought that, as SOTUs go, it was very good. It went long, but the story and appearance of the North Korean dissident at the end was quite moving, and worth hanging in there for.

The whole spectacle of the SOTU, with its incessant applause, is a bit much, and has become more of a show than anything else. On the other hand, in Trump’s case, it was an opportunity to actually present some of his positions that the media won’t cover honestly ~he very clearly laid out his immigration proposal, which is very moderate and a major compromise. In a sane world, it would pass both chambers of Congress easily…but, of course, we are not living in a sane world.

Anyway, I always watch the speech and the response (that was pretty bad, but they always are…) so I suppose I’m in the minority. But, overall, it was a well-written speech, well-delivered.

“The “F.B.I. was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” the bureau said in a statement. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

it is always possible to criticise – particularly if you are dead set against accepting something.

E=Mc^2 is “cherry picked”,.

This is the problem with just lobbing insults.

I have very little view on this memo – as I have not seen it yet.
Almost no one has.

My assessment will be made when it is actually made public.

Unless it provides some new claim I am not aware of, it is likely to be nothing more than confirmation of what we already pretty well know.

Ho, Hum.

It is likely to be more significant to those such as you who contiue to reject what is already self evident – either from ACTUAL evidence – ot the complete absence of evidence.
That is that there has never been anything to this Trump/Russia nonsense.

It is not the FBI’s use of the Steele Dossier that is the big problem – though that is a problem.
It is the absence of anything else of consequence that will be the huge problem.

I do not need the Nunes memo to grasp that.
Anything damaging to Trump has leaked into the media like a sieve.
And virtually all of it has been found false.

There is a huge amount of talk in the media about what MUST be there, what Mueller Must have, and perverse views of the law – such as this broad garbage Obstruction claim.

The obstruction claim is easily dispatched.
But the simplest way to do so that should get through to you is:
If firing Comey or asking Comey to go easy on Flynn are “obstruction”,
Then Obama going on national TV in the middle of an investigation and saying Clinton committed no crime is even larger obstruction.

You can not have one without the other.
This is constantly the problem with left wing nut interpretations of the law.
In your attempts to criminalize the conduct of those you do not like,
you ensnare myriads of people who are obviously innocent.

You make it clear that your idea of the law, is as merely a tool to persecute your enemies, whose meaning varies as you see fit.

I would suggest that you might want to check your sources – that is NOT What Wray said.

Loosely he said he would approve its release with some minor changes,
beyond that it is incomplete.

Given the FBI stonewalling over documents and the problems constructing a memo that would be acceptable to release that is not surprising.

Gowdy has repeatedly stated that he hopes the FBI will make public in some form documents as a consequence of the Memo.

Gowdy – is the person who actually reveiwed the classified Documents.

The House Intelligence committee basically using a chinese wall approach to the memo.

Gowdy reviewed documents, and made notes and then provided a summary to Nunes who wrote the memo from the summary. This is the approach that is typically used to avoid passing information that is “protected” to the public.

Regardless, the FBI is perfectly free to release whatever documents it wishes to support or disprove anything the memo asserts.

House republicans have reviewed the Schiff memo and aside from some sourcing issues and a couple of error corrections they are willing to vote for its release too.

I tell you that the Wray did not say what your linked tweet says he said,
And your response is to send a link to a tweet that confrims that Wray did not say what you claimed he said, and you think that is a rebuttal ?

Your original tweet appears to be echoing the bloomberg story from a day or two before.
That story was another of these 3rd hand hearsay stories that have near universally proved false.

The actual FBI statement is pretty much what I expected.

There is no assertions of any priviledge or any actual basis for not releasing the Memo.

Essentially Wray said “Congress legitimately engaged in oversight (which we fought tooth and nail) and came to conclusions that we do not accept”

I would have been surprised if Wray had said – we whole heartedly agree with the Nunes memo.

The FBI statement poses no basis at all for stopping the release.

There is not an “we do not think it is complete” privilege,
Nor a “we do not think it tells the full story” privilege.

When it is published the FBI will have the ability to correct or supplement.

Which I hope they do.

As I have noted before – I do not really care that much about the Nunes Memo.
I do not expect it says much that we do not already know.

But I do suspect it may push efforts to get the required documents declassified, or redacted and declassified.

I do not think “Trust us we are from the government” should EVER be an acceptable answer.

Ultimately – most everything is likely to come out. I hope it is sooner rather than later.

Watergate as an example has few secrets remaining – mostly such things as why did the burglars bug the specific phone they did, not ones that would have yeilded more useful political information.

Mostly the stuff related to Clinton has all come out. The bottom line is Bill is much more of a sexual predator than was thought, but was otherwise not involved in any of the illegal actions he was investigated for. Hillary on the other hand was deeply involved in most.

The same will occur here. In a few days, or months, or years we will know more than we want to know about the FBI investigations of Trump and Clinton.

It is already self evident that the Clinton email investigation was botched – whether deliberately or through incompetence.
It is already self evident that several key investigators were heavily biased towards Clinton.
It is likely but not established that bias rather than incompetence drove the mishandling.
It is already self evident that Much of what key people said publicly at the time of the investigation – Obama. Comey, Lynch – was FALSE.
There is evidence the outcome was pre-ordained as early as march.
Comey stated that the decision was his and that his remarks were prepared by him without review by others – that is self evidently a lie.
Comey testified that he did not meet with Obama at all during this time period – Strzok’s text’s indicate that he did. Comey either perjured himself or Strzok erred.
Comey testified the decision was not made until the day before he made his statement.
Yet, except for a few changes the draft statement was written near the start of the investigation and circulated.

I do not think any of the above is in question.
I can state much of the above even more strongly – there is an excellent circumstantial case for bias, and political corruption in the Clinton investigation involving Obama personally, as well as McCabe, Stzok, Comey, and a number of others.
That case has not been “proven” but the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling.

This then brings us to Trump.
Nearly all the Trump investigation prior to Mueller’s appointment was carried out by the same people who at best botched the clinton investigation, and at worst engaged in criminal political corruption.

Given that, everything they have done regarding Trump ought to be suspect.
Particularly given that no substance has ever emerged from that investigation.

The left has put this country through 2+ years of hell to exhonerate Clinton and get Trump.
They have not only failed. But they have proved themselves corrupt int he process.

“ As part of our recent work to understand Russian-linked activities on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.

Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing you because we have reason to believe that you:

• Were following one or more of these accounts at the time the accounts were suspended;

• Replied to or mentioned one or more of these accounts during the election period; or

• Retweeted, quote tweeted, or liked content from one or more of these accounts during the election period.

This is purely for your own information purposes, and is not related to a security concern for your account. We are sharing this information so that you can learn more about these accounts and the nature of the Russian propaganda effort. You can see examples of content from these suspended accounts on our blog if you’re interested.

People look to Twitter for useful, timely, and appropriate information. We are taking active steps to stop malicious accounts and Tweets from spreading, and we are determined to keep ahead of the tactics of bad actors. For example, in recent months we have developed new techniques to identify accounts manipulating our platform, have improved our process for challenging suspicious accounts, and have introduced new measures designed to identify and take action on coordinated malicious activity. In 2018, we are building on these improvements. Our blog also contains more information about these efforts.

People come to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world. We are committed to making it the best place to do that and to being transparent with the people who use and trust our platform.

I did however get tweets from myriads of people complaining that twitter – as a response to demands from democrats in congress had suspended the accounts of REAL PEOPLE because they were claiming they were russian twitter bots.

Twitter can do as it pleases, and have whatever policies it please.
Twitter’s viability and credibility as a platform rests on the policies it has and how it enforces those.

It has been evident from long before this Trump garbage that the major social media platforms are atleast partly hostile to viewpoint diversity, and more important still that their policies are being used and abused by the extreme left to censor – not merely the right but even insufficiently leftist voices.

Again, Twitter, Facebook, etc are free to do that.
But if they do so they risk losing large portions of their users.

What is impermissible – but is occuring is threats by legislators to threaten social media with government censorship if they do not censor themselves.

There is no positive outcome from that.

That is a clear ethics violation on the part of those legislators. Threatening to take anyone’s constitutional rights should disqualify someone from elected office.

Jay here correctly cites Trump for doing precisely that, it is not different if Feinstein of Schiff do the same.

I have mostly ignored Trump’s threats against the free speach of others – primarily because it is obvious they are not serious, and more importantly that they will not be carried out.

They are STILL however unacceptable.

The difference regarding Feinstein, Schiff and legislators, is that though they have less unilateral ability to enforce their will – congress has a much more credible reputation for shaming and silencing people based on their speach or compliance with censorship requirements

“I did however get tweets from myriads of people complaining that twitter – as a response to demands from democrats in congress had suspended the accounts of REAL PEOPLE because they were claiming they were russian twitter bots.”

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Myriads?
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho.
That’s either an outright lie, or a gross exaggeration.
Why?
Because if myriads of Twitter accounts of Real People were suspended, how did those myriads contact other tweeters to tweet you? Myriads of phone calls, post cards, smoke signals to other people who still are on Twitter, who in a myriad of tweets tweeted you?

“Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Myriads?
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho.
That’s either an outright lie, or a gross exaggeration.
Why?
Because if myriads of Twitter accounts of Real People were suspended, how did those myriads contact other tweeters to tweet you? Myriads of phone calls, post cards, smoke signals to other people who still are on Twitter, who in a myriad of tweets tweeted you?

Dave, you’re full of crap, in a laughable kinda way.”

Again logic is not your forte.
Worse you can not apply logic consistently.

We have twitters engineers saying they identify russian bots as anyone posting conservative content.
Yet, despite that you choose to beleive that Twitter can target more narrowly – of course entirely begging the question fo whether they should.

“Because if myriads of Twitter accounts of Real People were suspended, how did those myriads contact other tweeters to tweet you?”:

Have you ever heard of email, facebook, other forms of social media ?

What about just noticing you are no longer seeing tweets or retweets from on of the accounts you follow and then checking and finding out that account is suspended ?
Have you even used twitter ?
Do you know that you can find out the status of accounts you are following ?

Honestly Jay, you are embarrasing yourself.

Further, I said what I have sen in my twitter feed.
No one I am following has been suspended.
I would suspect everyone I am follwing is far too high a profile, further I am following people on the right and left and libertarians. Thus far Twitter is not targetting Libertarians.

At the same time Conservatives are extremely sensitive to the social media targeting that has been done to them

Yes, I absolutley beleive that when some conservative – or some libertarian who follows conservatives, notes that a dozen accounts he has been follwing are suddenly suspended
that they are not “just making it up”.

In fact I would guess that some conservative groups are very actively trying to monitor the attempts by social media to silence them.

I would note that the “Fake news” story that the #repealthememo hashtag was the result of russian bots was refuted nearly instantly.

That pretty much means that a variety of groups are out there monitoring the targeting that social media is doing.

The story of social media targeting conservatives is something ongoing for several years.

Do you really think after years of being targeted that these groups are clueless with respect to tracking their own targetting ?

I believe Facebook has recently dropped its news feed, specifically because they can not effectively censor it in a viewpoint neutral fashion without gargantuan human resource
and it is just not worth the crap they get as a result.

At the moment I hope that Facebook and Twitter are feeling the heat from non-leftist groups who are angry about being targeted.

And yes this russia garbage is little more than a trojan horse to compel social media to swing left.

In the event it succeeds all that will occur is you will bifurcate social media.

Twitter, Facebook etc. have a vested interest in preventing that – as they will lose revenue.
But we will see what actually happens.

Some have suggested that it is mostly a welfare program for Russian youth – as their influence is in consequential.

Regardless if you work out the numbers – we are talking about something like 25,000 facebook posts a day – most of which are targeted at Russia, the Ukraine, the mid east or Eastern Europe.
Nor is it really 25,000 facebook posts because that assumes All IRA employees are posing on Facebook.

Their US 2016 operations were TINY and did not promote candidates.

I would remind you that there are 500M tweets every day.

Frankly, I think it is stupid and a waste of Twitters time and efforts.

I think that censorship of any kind is stupid and self defeating.
And we have plenty of evidence of that.

There is no good outcome that comes from censorhip.

While I would argue that we do not have the AI capabilities to properly target a specific view point.
That inadequacy is a good thing.

The worst thing that could ever happen is the development and deployment of a capacity that could actually silence specific viewpoints.

Any gun you can point at the IRA you can also point at the NRA, or NARAL, or NOW, or AFSCME or MoveOn, or GreenPeace.

Finally the ONLY thing I actually care about in this is that the Russian government is stealing from Russians to fund this.
That is a problem for Russian citizens.

Sorros has funded antifa members to appear at protests – that is far worse than this.
So long as he pays them and bears some responsibility for any violence they are involved with “I do not care”

Every lawyer, as well as everyone employed in sales and marketing is a “paid advocate”

There is no difference.

I do not like the fact that you and others are lying about the scale of this.
But ultimately I do not care about the scale.

Despite bandying about words designed to inflame passions like Russians,

The ultimate objective is to silence a viewpoint.
At the moment possibly because of who is speacking – which is bad enough,
but ultimately it is not that Russians are speaking that bothers you.
It is that there is political speach that is outside your control.

I am far more scared of you, than “Russian Influence”.

Two much speach is no danger to us.
Enforced silence is the end of liberty.

You want unity, then don’t release a partisan memo containing information derived from secret documents, written by Nunes staff. instead submit it to a neutral arbiter (bi-partisan) group along with the counter Dem memo.
We Don’t need more trash

I do not expect the prosecutor in court to be neutral.
I do expect they are truthful.

Bi-partisan is not the same as the truth.

Bi-Partisan was not the goal when democrats controlled the house and senate and executive.

Bi-Partsan is an attribute with some value. It is not an end in and of itself.
Truth is an end.

Technically the House Intelligence committee IS the neutral arbiter overseeing the FBI.
It has both democrats and republicans and both fully participated in the oversight.
All had access to the same materials.
They are divided on their assessment.

Ultimately the public is going to decide what they believe.
Your demand for unity from politicians is little more than an effort to water down what people get to know.

I have zero doubt that on release those on the left will attack this with pitchforks and those on the right will laud it.

The rest of us will get to make our own assessments.

Hopefully the FBI will be prodded to declassify as much as possible to help us in that assessment.
I am much more interested in that than the Nunes memo.

Regardless, the FBI will have plenty of opportunity to refute anything in the memo.

Technically they already have. There has been an over a years long congressional investigation.
Both democrats and republicans got to call and question witnesses,
All members were allowed to review the classified documents.

The Nune’s memo is essentially “the judgement of the tribunal”.

You are saying – not having even read it, that the conclusions must be wrong and we need a new Tribunal.

You want a bi-parsian pannel – what do you think the House Intelligence committee is ?

If you do not think the people we elected to oversee the executive branch can do that job – then you need to elect different people.

The nunes memo is litterally exactly what these representatives were elected to do.
Oversee the FBI.

Guys ( and that is the “guys ” my mom used when out west that included anyone of both sexes, just to clarify the PC that anyone may have an issue with), can we stop debating the undebatable?

Who the hell knows what Mueller has found. Who knows what the hell was in Wrays mind when he decided to “fire” McCabe. For every twit on Twitter to every “nobodies” know -it-all comment about what is going on, NOBODY KNOWS!!!!

Who the hell or what the hell is Tapwires? Where do they get their info? Is there info better than “More Shit Now Being Communicated “(MSNBC)?

I doubt it. Wait until something is reported from the investigators because they are the only ones that know and they have not released their findings yet! Once they do then we can get back to the left/right fight.😤😤😤😤

It is irrelevant who TapWire is.
What matters is whether the Wray Memo circulated is accurate.

I do not know, but I expect we will soon.

Regardless, the headline is tremendous spin.

Unless you read the article you would conclude Wray asked McCabe to leave to spend time saving puppies.

Does it matter whether McCabes is out because Trump thinks he is a crook,
Because the House thinks he is a crook.
or because the IG thinks he is a crook.

The story essentially is –
Dam the media, they are wrong,
McCabe was not “fired” because Trump said his investigation fo Clinton was politically corrupt, or because the House said his investigation fo Clinton was politically corrupt, but likely because the IG is going to say his investigation of Clinton was politically corrupt.

This thread is already too long for easy usage on a cell phone. Some of us care about that, call them sparrows. One does not, he fouls his own nest, and ours TNM, for his own gratification.
“Speaking of sparrows, I recall watching a nest with four baby birds. Each of the occupants, in polite sequence, pivoted its tail out of the nest and sent its dropping down to the ground below. God gave these tiny birds programmed instincts to avoid fouling their own nest. We have been given, instead, wisdom to make …”

Jay” You still posting on Moderate Voice?
We could join you there.
I’m sure they’ll luv Dave. ”

You really dont want to go there! They will eat you up and spit you out like shit in a snow blower. I spent a month or so there a few years back and was called every derogatory name, along with all the clean neo-nazi names one could be called. If you did not regurgitate their ultra liberal Pelosi/Shumer words, you became the target of their “moderate voice”.

But, your position on Trump might fit in nicely. You could all comment in unison about how much of a blight he has been on America. But please do not make any comments concerning anything slightly moderate or conservative unless you want to get the same feedback you give Dave.

Now Dave moving there would be fun to watch. He could cause a melt down since he can give as well as they give. Most anyone that does not believe in their positions, end up leaving like myself, so they live in their bubble. Dave could burst that.

TMV has been crippled by hackers and is still up, but the comment flow is hampered because they don’t show who has made recent comments on a particular post. It is designed for short fast discourse on multiple subjects.

As far as Dave over there, he would be kicked out very quickly.
They have commenting rules: “As a courtesy to our readers and commenters also, do not leave long comments that others have to scroll and scroll through, and/or that are aimed at one [or two] other commenter[s], thereby dominating the commenters’ space at TMV. If you wish to have a back and forth with another commenter, take it offline to your own email [with the other person’s written permission] or elsewhere off-site if the other commenter agrees.”

Heh. I posted one comment on TMV, years ago… a pretty innocuous one, and was immediately banned, because the moderation software determined that I was another poster, trying to comment under 2 names….a sock puppet basically.

I “appealed” my banning, but never even got the courtesy of a response.

Blaming your own problems that are inside of your own control on others is a moral problem of YOURS.

You do not have control over the actions of others.

I find many of the posts here “foul”. I find those who think insult is a substitute for argument “foul”.
I find those who wish to complain about problems of their own making “foul”.
I find those who think they are entitled to control the non-violent actions of others “foul”.
I find those who look to censor expression they do not like whether directly or through pretext “Foul”.

I think you might take a lesson from your own sparrows – because by YOUR standards You are fouling the nest.

I agree that WP has poor support and seems to bog down.
But we have gone to almost 2000 comments before problems – except with tablets and phones.

I have my own domain and hosting service and had my own blog there for a while.
But that used WP too,

I am looking at other Blogging software I can install – in the free time I do not have.
I have been doing so for a while.
Because it is really time to retire as a commenter and move on to actually writing articles.

I know you do not beleive it but I have a real life.
I have to approve a contractors draw for a 3M project by tomorow,
Refresh my knowledge of SQL, learn cold fustion, build Linux for a RISCV-32
get an ultrasonic water level sensor working on an Arduino Pro Mini.
Collect rent.
Hopefully not prepare to evict a tenant who is about to go 3 months in arrears.
as well as a long todo list from my wife on the house.

The FBI said the memo was incomplete.
That is NOT even close to the same as a lie.

The DOJ has not said anything. Various media have reported 3rd party hearsay purportedly from Boyd.

By your definition of a “confirmed liar” so is everyone in washington – as well as Obama and Clinton. I can live with that.

Neither DOJ not FBI have made an actual claim of harm.
There is no first person account from anyone who could actually know that there is any potential harm from this memo – aside from the reputational damage to many within the DOJ/FBI from revealing the Truth.

So what we really have is most of the House IC stating this should be released.
The house as a whole going along.
Trump has not officially spoken yet, Whitehouse lawyers are still reviewing, but after their approval which is likely the memo will be released.
The FBI says the incompleteness of the memo creates an inaccurate perception.
Fine that is in the power of the FBI to correct. Regardless, it is not a real harm.

In otherwords you have a bunch of people who are unhappy that the Memo is being released by no one willing to provide a legitimate legal reason it can not be.

Apparently you think when the constitution says the congress oversees the executive, that congress needs the permission of the DOJ and FBI to do so.

Let me clarify a bit here.
Any individual member of congress can read this memo out loud into the congressional record without consequence to them. They have immunity from the speach and debate clause of the constitution.

There never has been any doubt this was going to be made public

The House IC is following a more formal set of procedures – because the consequences of unilaterally releasing potentially classified information without providing the executive the opportunity for redaction are significant. It would further slow congresses ability to get classified documents from the executive.

That is the only thing this entire Kabuki theater has been about.
Preserving as much of what little cooperation remains between DOJ/FBI and congress.

One of the problems is that Congress has the absolute authority to review classified documents – but not the power to does so. Meaning Congress has no army and no police force.
Congress can found the Attorney General in contempt, but short of holding him in the capital jail there is nothing more that can be done to force DOJ compliance.
Congress can refer a recalcitrant to DOJ for prosecution – that worked badly under Obama where DOJ just whitewashed the head of the IRS, Lerhner, Holder and Clinton.

That is part of the point – under Obama the executive basically gave congress the finger, knowing they could get away with it.

Much of what is occuring now is payback for that.

Many of the people in the crosshairs are Obama Holdovers who are among those who gave congress the finger before.

If you think democrats are going to take back the house in 2018 – you should care about this, as do you want the DOJ in 2019 saying FU to congressional subpeona’s ?

You should consider that seriously – because the Obama hold overs are being removed from DOJ and FBI one at a time, painfully.

Do you want Trump to install his own people with the same willingness to say FU to congressional oversight ?

“You don’t get it. Sad. It’s the volume of your comments not the content which I don’t have the time to read.”

I “get it” – I do not care. You are not obligated to read anything. You are not obligated to post,
I am not obligated to conform my posting to your wishes.

It does not matter why you wish to censor others.
There is no difference in the moral failure.

“How
dare you tell us not use our cell phones
You fascist.”

More false narrative.
What I told you was that it was immoral for you to blame your problems using your prefered means of posting on others.
I did not create the limitations of cell phones.
I did not create the issues with word press.

If a cell phone is your prefered way of posting – that is your free choice.
If that works well – great. If other ways work better – that is your problem.
No one else is obligated to change the way they post to suit your preferences.
Presuming they are makes YOU the fascist.

Your presumption that you are free to force others to conform to your wishes,
a presumption that you express with regard to just about everything
is the core of everything that I disagree with you about.
It is also at the core of why you are immoral.

You seek to impose your will on others by force.

Fortunately the internet is NOT a place you are able to do so.
No matter how much you rant.
Unfortunately two centuries of progressive efforts to destroy the limits in our constitutional government have all too often allowed you the power to impose your will on others by force.

It is irrelevant whether you are left or right or upside down.
The use of force against others requires justification.
There are few acceptable justifications.
The will of the majority is not one of those.
Your certainty of the righteousness of your cause is not either – the nazi’s were just as certain.

Playing semantic games, such as “it is not what you say, but how frequently you say it that is my problem” is not sufficient justification either.

Again before making stupid arguments like this read Mill’s “on Liberty”, it is relatively short – 100 pages, it is free. It has never been refuted.

There are myriads of others who have made the same compelling arguments.
But Mill puts them all in one place and confronts ever fallacious argument for censorship of all kinds, and further demonstrates how they all are destructive – even when the party being censored is wrong.

The FBI said it has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the [Nunes] memo’s accuracy.”

You equating that with a mere ‘incomplete’ is dishonest, dopey, disingenuous, and a strong indication of your moral disintegration.

The reason you keep rationalizing/apologizing for DickDeadDonald is that you identify with his narcissism. Like him, you can’t admit your own stupidities. And keep corkscrewing your self deeper and deeper in nonsensical positions. Like this:

“Having stonewalled Congress’ demands for information for nearly a year, it’s no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies.”

The quote you provided from the FBI is just a dark and wordy version of “incomplete”.

I do not know what DOJ and FBI said to Nunes.

I do know that we have no confirmation of the leaks to the press, and that the actual released statements to the press are not consistent with the leaks.

I would also note that I posted the DOJ had said nothing YESTERDAY.
The FBI had said nothing until the day before.

Many of these stories are deliberate distortions.

I do not know if Nunes denied Burr a copy.
I do not know if he denied him access.

The press reports to the contrary have no credible source.

I do know that Grassley openly admitted to having seen and been disturbed by the memo several says ago.

The probability is that Burr had the same opportunities as Grassley.

The FBI did not get the Memo “instantly”. They have now had it for several days and they have had the opportunity to publicly command and request changes – which have been made.

Schiff has requested a change that was made – and then bitched because changes were made.

I do think the Memo is being overhyped.

I think that what is says will be damning. BUT, I do not think it will do more than confirm things we pretty much already know.

I think that the attacks on it are stupid and disengenuous.

I do not think anyone not on the far left really cares.

I think it is going to be very very hard to persuade anyone not on the far left that Nunes is evilly keeping secret something he is fighting desparately to make public, and that democrats are actually trying to make public something they are criticising and desparately trying to keep secret.

I think everybody is trying to make the story about tangential issues related to the process of making it public.

The FACTS that matter:

What does it say ?
Can the FBI or the left REFUTE what it says ?

The memo itself shifts the burden of Proof to the FBI. That is its fundimental purpose.

FBI and DOJ have stalled in making documents available to the House and Senate – despite subpeonas that they are obligated to comply with or assert a privildge IN COURT that the courts will recognize as constitutional.

Ultimately Law Makers were given access to Some of what they asked for.
But not actually copies of it.

Nunes has learned from the DOJ/FBI’s playbook and has done to the left what the DOJ/FBI had done to the House – provided access without copies.

Regardless – whether the left likes it or not the presumption of most of the public will be the conclusions in the memo are supported by the classified documents that the House Reviewed.

One of the reasons for that presumption is that the FBI/DOJ have the power and opportunity to correct errors – both BEFORE and AFTER the release

The argument that the memo is wrong but we can not tell you why is toast.

In the event the FBI/DOJ successfully refute significant findings in the memo.
Nunes and many republicans are TOAST.

You can pretend all of this is partisan and that means the side you do not like is lying,
But there are real world aspects to politics.
Republicans and most moderates do not take kindly to being LIED to.
Unfortunately democrats and the left are far more forgiving of their politicians.
So long as those on the left show sufficient fealty to the cause – lies and deciept are forgiven.

If as has been pretty well established Schiff is full of “shit” he will still be re-elected in his district – likely by larger margins than ever.
Because while he lied through his teeth, his lies were in survice to some purported greater good – the villification fo the evil Trump – who we feel certain isa criminal thefore actual evidence is unnescescary.

Nunes on the other hand will not be able to show his face in public if there are significant factual errors in this memo.

Further if even on significant aspect of the memo is discredited – Republicans as a whole are in deep shit.

The real significance of this memo is that it is going to be a huge turning point.

Either it marks the death of Trump Russia Collusion and the demise of the Mueller investiggation – just to be clear, these are not vaporizing they are just moving towards the background.

OR its being discredited will empower the left and re-invigorate an otherwise dying investigation.

You say Nunes is partisan. I think Nunes is wise enough to know that this is likely the seminal moment in his life. One way or another this is what he will be remembered for.

The document sent to tRump is NOT the one the committee saw or voted on.
Nunes sent an altered dicumentntomthebwhite house.
This Nunes is an unprincipled scumbag.
Keep defending scumbags and you become one.

BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6

Schiff has been so wrong so often and yet those on the left hold him as a hero.
He says what they want to hear. Truth does nto matter.
Devon Nunes has been correct in everything he has said from the begining of this.
And yet he is excoriated.

In my world people who are found to have repeatedly been pretty accurate in their remarks are afforded greater trust, while those who are constanty wrong are ignored.

Jay apparently lives in a different world.

I have no idea whether the Whitehouse was given exactly the same memo the house voted on.
I do not beleive that Schiff does either. I do not beleive he can know – unless someone in the whitehouse shares their copy with him.

Regardless, this sucker is getting published soon. And we will all know.

All over the place Lefties have been telling us all kinds of evil things about this memo.
It can not be made public – and always because of a claim about it they can not actually know unless it is made public

I thought about this a bit – and aparently some others have too, and there is nothing that can be in even the classified source documents that keeping secret is not MORE HARMFUL than any possible damage to releasing them.

About the only thing I can think of that would require serious redactions – is the revelation that there is a spy in the Kremlin. I highly doubt that.

If there is stuff in this classified material that made prosecuting Trump or surrogates impossible – so be it. If there is any such information it would ALSO result in Trump’s near immediate impeachment.

The actual purpose of government secrecy in a criminal investigation is to protect the DEFENDANT. It is not to protect the governments investigation.

If the FBI actually had other credible basis for the FISA warrants – WE NEED TO KNOW.

If the FBI/DOJ are even more politicized than we know to date – WE NEED TO KNOW.

This entire mess threatens the foundation of government.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

This entire #resistance mess is an attack on that consent, and without it government falls.

“Consent of the governed ” does nto mean high approval ratings, or that we get the government we voted for.

It means that even those of us who did not get what we wanted accept what we got – until our next opportunity to vote.

The larger the number of people who do not accept the legitimacy of those in power the closer our government is to toppling.

That is what we saw in East Germany and then the rest of the USSR in 1989, that is what we very nearly saw in Tianamen square.

That is what the left is actively seeking.

And they do not understand how incredibly dangerous that is.

If the consent of the governed is withdrawn as a result of a false narative – there will be an enormous backlash.

The left does not grasp that the gains the right has made in govenrment were accomplished legitimately and reflect the wishes of an enormous number of people.
Those wishes will not disappear merely because Trump was gone.

Results that are not accepted for long by those who worked to build this republican control of government and elect Trump are going to result in a conflict that is far larger and potentially more violent than anything Anitfa has managed.

Our revolution was the consequence of only 30% of colonists sufficiently angry that they took up arms against their government.

I do not actually think Trump’s removal without cause that a super majority of us accept will result in an armed revolution. But it near certain will result in a far stronger effort to destroy the left.

Jay, like Ron, I don’t know how to embed a tweet here…but I just saw one from Byron York of the Washington Examiner:

“Just talked with House Intel source. Said total changes to memo were: A) Unknown number of ‘grammatical and clarifying’ fixes. B) One change requested by FBI due to sources & methods concerns. C) One two-word change requested by Democrats for accuracy. House Intel GOP statement:”

So, this is Schiff’s deal now ~ whining about grammatical fixes, FBI redactions, and wording changes requested by Democrats. Anything to keep intelligence abuses from being made public.

To embed a tweet:
1. Go to the upper right of tweet, to the v Mark and click it.
2. Click ‘Share Tweet Via’ words.
3. On the drop down menu bottom row click ‘Copy Link to Tweet’
4. Go to the comment you are writing here, and ‘paste’ it –

Click on the tweet. That should bring up just that tweet on Twitter.
It will NOT look the same as it does when you post here.
Regardless, copy the link from the browser address bar
Put that in your post.

I have been avoiding posting any links – without stripping the http:// from them.
Because I beleive that WordPresses attempts to follow links is significantly impairing performance.

I think videos are most expensive.

I do not KNOW any of this for a fact,
But I have a pretty good idea how word press works and the performance costs to load every bit of text I have ever posted here is likely less than a single video.

Any link that WordPress “processes” provides you with some kind of preview is likely extremely expensive.

That cost is likely to be even higher on less capable devices – like cell phones and tablets.

So I have stopped using links in a way that wordpress tries to preview them.

That is my attempt to improve performance here.

I can not dictate that others do the same.

But I have zero interest in complaints about performance from those who are still posting links that cause previews.

As I noted a single video preview likely requires downloading more bytes of data than every single post I have ever made on TNM.

Text is incredibly tiny in comparison to most anything else on the internet.

“Just talked with House Intel source. Said total changes to memo were: A) Unknown number of ‘grammatical and clarifying’ fixes. B) One change requested by FBI due to sources & methods concerns. C) One two-word change requested by Democrats for accuracy. House Intel GOP statement:”

Presuming that is correct – which we have no way of knowing, none of it seems consequential.

Is there some reason we should piss over Nunes for correcting grammatical errors ? Or making a change requested by the FBI or making a change requested by democrats ?

Right now we can not know the truth.

But my guess is soon enough we will.

If any of the bad things being said About Nunes are true – he is finished.
Past experiences lead me to beleive NONE of the complaints are true.

At the same time if even ONE of the compaints about the memo is false – who ever made that complaint should be finished too.

Schiff has not merely been wrong in the past. Thus far he has been universally wrong.
How is the left not so embarrased they have demanded he slink quietly into the shaddows ?

Because the left does nto care about Truth. The objective is just to get Trump.

“And where did Schiff get his information ?… Unless the whitehouse is sharing their copy with him, or someone with Nune’s staff is sharing with him – in otherwords another “anonymous source”. then he is just making it up.”

Yes, he must have an inside source, either at Nunes or at the White House.
Which lends CREDIBILITY to Schiff’s statement, more so with all the denials that immediately followed to the severity of the changes, NOT denying that there were changes.

Might and must are completely different. To get to “must” you have to presume he does actually have a copy. Past experience suggests a more likely atlernative – he is lying, or he is being lied to.
You still do not get it. Most stories regarding this entire mess have proven FALSE.

There is zero doubt that lots of unnamed sources are lying like crazy.
There are even a few named sources with incredibly bad credibility – Schiff and Warner extremely high among them.

“Which lends CREDIBILITY to Schiff’s statement, more so with all the denials that immediately followed to the severity of the changes, NOT denying that there were changes.”

Affirming the consequent is actually a FORMAL logical fallacy.
It is just plain flat out a formal logical error.

Regardless, unless Nunes or Trump provided Schiff with what was sent to the whitehouse Then Schiff does not know.

This crapp is tiring.
The media – which seem willing to report any negative Trump Rumour, is not reporting this as of the moment.

Further the claim makes no sense. Ultimately if Nunes made consequential changes he will get caught and he credibility will be shot.

In this particular instance there could be some issues.

Though Nunes has the ability to read whatever he wants to the public from the house floor,
no one is doing that because they are seeking to preserve what little good will exists with the executive by following established procedures.

While DOJ/FBI can not constitutionally deprive congress of any information they ask for.
As a practical matter they can do whatever they wish – so long as the administration as a whole supports them. Neither the courts not the congress have a police force or army.
The power of the judiciary and legislature over the executive rests on those in the executive remaining obedient to the demands of the courts or legislature.

All presidents acting unilaterally errode that. Obama has done enormous damage to that.
We know have some branches of the executive – such as DOJ/FBI not merely defying congress but freguently defying the president.

That is what is wrong with #theresistance – with respect to members of the executive branch.

You may not legitimately undermine the president from within the executive.
It is lawless.
If you believe the presidents actions are constitutional and/or wrong – you must obey or quit.
There is not a #resist choice from within the government.

The only evidence that Mueller presented in his indictment was of tax evasion – which he repeatedly misrepresented as money laundering.

I pointed out that Preet Bhara run a large insider trading investigation with several prosecutions on similar misrepresentations regarding money. While he won the trial he was completely bitch slapped by the 2nd circuit – one of the more liberal in the country.

Mueller’s Logan act claims are not only garbage, but by his own facts apply to the US consulting firms Manafort hired – not to Manafort.

I think that the evidence Mueller presented paints a damning picture of tax evasion.
But it is NOT money laundering.

Mueller did not make the tax evasion claim because Manafort had settled with the IRS and because he had a statue of limitations problem.

I think Manafort is absolutely egregiously guilty of tax evasion

After that his is guilty of being someone no one likes who is a paid mouthpiece for whoever wants him. We do not respect that.

But he did not violate the logan act – which has almost never been prosecuted – likely because it is incredibly unconstitutional.
And he did nto engage in money laundering.

I do not need to like someone to defend them.
They merely need to be innocent of what they are charged with.
Even the fact they may have been guilty of something else – even gotten away with it, is irrelevant.

Jay, I am not technically literate enough to know how to just cut images out of article and post like you do with your twitter links. This was on a number of websites, all conservative because the liberal media is not going to say anything bad about one of their own.

But just page down to the tweet. Someone that deserves all our respect dont you think! Really shows liberals want to bring us together, unlike Trump, eh?

People of every political persuasion are always eager to use every news event to somehow make a point about the evil or error of their enemies.

I recall the evangelical remarks that WTC or other disasters were god turning has back on gays.
Virtually every shooting is used as proof that we need gun control.

When we hear of a shooting we all breathlessly await hearing whether is was a muslim terrorist, or some lone white male or ….. whatever will reinforce our particular ideology.

BUT the news particularly national news is primarily about things that are VERY RARE.
They do not demonstrate anything. They are typically more rare than lightning strike deaths.
They have almost no cosmic or policy meaning.

In a nation of 330M people we do not have the power to absolutely prevent violence and death, or all accidents.

We work hard to reduce these – within the constraints of WHAT WE CAN AFFORD.

I continually stress last part and the left and even you constantly ignore it.

The improvement to our lives is compounding.
We are unable to make many many improvements UNTIL our standard of living has reached the point we can afford them. But once we can – those improvements increase our standard of living further.

Developing countries can not afford not to use child labor, Developed countries actual harm themselves by doing so.

Transportation safety in the US (and the world) has improved dramatically over the past several decades. And it will continue to do so – so long as the standard of living that allows us to afford it continues to increase

Any law that compels us to do something more costly than we would do freely – takes something else we wanted more from us by definition. Ultimately though whatever that law seeks to accomplish will happen anyway – because obviously we want it, but it will happen with more important needs have been met.

Regardless, it is wrong to pretend that all disasters are somehow political.

SOME disasters reflect actual human errors of consequence – and those should be punished.

Zero errors are not possible.

In 1000 years we will have a tiny fraction of the accidents we have today.
But we will still have accidents.

I saw this. I really fear for the future of this country, with people like Tasini. Partisan division is one thing. Actively cheering a train crash, in which many could have been injured and someone actually died? Sick.

Jay, I sure wished you would keep your powder dry until all the information comes out. You a smart enough to know all this tweets are crap traps to influence the ignorants and IQ challenged individuals unable to think for themselves.
Memo presented to house intelligence committee for release vote.
Memo approved for release
Memo sent to White House for review
Memo reviewed by FBI, DHS with Kelly.
Memo revised by FBI and other homeland security to remove security issues.
Memo returned to House Intellegence committee to approve release of revised info.
Memo in revised form will then be released by house or kept secret

Memo presented to house intelligence committee for release vote.
(on a fully partisan vote)
Memo approved for release
(Same partisan approval)
Memo sent to White House for review
(By Nunes, with alterations)
Memo reviewed by FBI, DHS with Kelly.
(Inaccurate description. The FBI complained about inaccuracies, etc, and DIDNT want it sent. Same for DHS. Kelly has lost his credibility.)
Memo revised by FBI and other homeland security to remove security issues.
(Just reported but unverified)
Memo returned to House Intellegence committee to approve release of revised info.
(Same)
Memo in revised form will then be released by house or kept secret

(Some are betting it will remain secret going forward, because the negative response to tRump from leaks will be devastating.

I absolutely agree with you that republicans OWN this, further that democrats OWN opposition to it. Which ever side is wrong will be damaged significantly and the side that is right will benefit.

If the republicans release this without votes from democrats – they own it.
That is what partisan governing means.

As an example the Democrats FULLY Owned PPACA – for good or for evil. Whatever people think of it – they think of democrats, which is Why Repubicans should be extremely careful about any effort to fix it or replace it with PPACA lite.

Republicans FULLY Own Gorsuch.
Republicans FULLY own the Tax bill.
Republicans will FULLY own this memo.

Partisan does NOT mean good or evil.
It only means WHO owns it.

If this Memo provokes some huge bashlash as you predict – for reasons I can not fathom.
The harm will be to republicans, and the benefit to democrats.
Conversely if the Memo is not credibly disproven – the benefits will be to republicans and the harm to democrats.

I find your choices as to what is only reported but not verified to be quite interesting.

Much of your comentary on the timeline is speculation or rumor. It may be true, but it is not known.

Ultimately picking at the process is NOT going to matter.

The memo will be released and people will get to judge for themselves.
The DOJ/FBI will have the oportunity to support Schiff/Warner of whoever else wishes to join them. Or Not.
And people will judge.

I can not make sense of your comments regarding backlash against leaks.

It is pretty easy to guess all kinds of things that could be in this memo. There are very few possibilities that most people will even comprehend as “leaks” of classified material.

Republicans will be in trouble with regard to that – if some mole in the Kremlin is exposed.
And that is not happening. There is alot else that might well be classified – but most people will not understand why it was kept from them.

Any backlash is going to be focused on the Truth of the memo.
If True – democrats are toast. If false republicans are.

I do not think Schiff has been correct about anything since this started.

I would note that in January of last year he PROMISED that he had seen proof of collusion with the Russians – and that it was NOT circumstantial and that we would all see it.

I guess that is still possible, but it has been over a year.
Every rumour that would have confirmed Schiff;s claim has been proven false.

Few even on the left have any hope of finding evidence of corruption.

The proof that Russia improperly “influenced” the election – much less that Trump colluded is dubious and circumstantial.

The left is now fixated on process crimes – i.e. lying about the collusion that does nto exist.

Maybe left wing nuts will buy that.

I am not interested.

I would exhonerate Flynn and company in a second. I would demand an appology from Mueller and his crowd. and I would fire them.
And if that did not happen I would have them charged with abuse of power under color of authority and let the courts sort it out.

I would also fire the entire upper levels of DOJ and FBI as well asn NSA and the rest of the Intelligence community and start over.

Even if we get a new crop of criminals. Atleast they will be less experienced, and they message that this is not to be tolerated will be sent.

Further a few people need to be prosecuted – so that this kind of crap does nto happen again.

Like I said a couple of times, I am not making any decisions as to who did what when and how. People like Jay will drink the cool aide and maybe it will be fine and they will come out looking smart for jumping on when this started, or they could come out looking like complete jack asses once anything has been determined. I can wait and make my decision once the facts are known.

in the last two days I have heard the investigation by Mueller is wrapping up and nothing has been found, he is fixin’ to charge Trump with obstruction of justice and finally he is going to charge Donald Jr for lying concerning the trump tower meeting with the Russian attorney and that will be bad news for Donald Sr.

What I would like to see if the third issue is true is for Trump to pardon his son, resign from the presidency after doing so and let Pence take over. I am sick of all this political crap that is never going to stop as long as Donald Trump is president. He has done every thing he can do as president because this is an election year and nothing ever gets done in an election year, his third year is going to be under democrat congress so their is going to be non-stop investigations to start impeachment hearings for some made up charge and finally the next year is once again an election year.

He needs to go back to NYC and witness the impact of one year of positive administrative actions on the economy and enjoy the rest of his life in peace. And without Trump, the Democrats lose their primary target for 2018.

There are myriads of rumours of all kinds floating arrount.
Past experience indicates that most ot them are false.

I am not sure it is possible to discern what postponing Flynn’s sentencing means.
It is just as easy to argue that he has nothing, as it is that his case is strong.

But what is going on regarding the Memo matters alot.

If the memo clearly establishes that there was no basis for the investigation in the first place, which not technically fatal, Mueller will still effectively be a lame duck.

It is also relevant how the Memo deals with Rosenstein.
Rosenstein is under a deep dark cloud at Justice.

If he is gone it is pretty much certain Mueller is going to be handicapped.
It is likely any replacement is going to substantially narrow Muellers brief – and yes, they can do that, and demand that Mueller show HIM a compelling case, before letting him venture into new territory. It is unlikely Mueller had he basis needed to do much of what he has already done.

A new deputy AG could ask for a Legal oppinion regarding Obstruction from DOJ, which would almost certainly be narrower than Mueller is trying to use – and compell Mueller to stick to it.

BTW there are already existing opinions on the matter that were done during Watergate, Iran Contra and Clinton.
We do not know what Mueller is actually doing – but what the rumours state is far from the opinions written in the past.

All of those agree that the President can not obstruct justice in exercising a power given him by the constitution.

In amoung the days “rumours” is that McCabe delayed informing congress about the discovery of the Weinner emails for over a month. That Comey’s letter went to congress when he discovered that. If true – that fully explains McCabes departure.

I would note that McCabe was HEAVILY involved in the setup of Flynn.
It is entirely possible that Flynn is looking to back out of the plea deal, and Mueller is stalling
My guess is Flynn’s attorney’s are likely to let Mueller stall as longs as he wants.
Time serves Flynn better than Mueller.
McCabe is severly damaged goods at this point – so is Strzok.
The only reason for Flynn to NOT back out of this deal is concenr that Mueller could go after him for other things – and particularly after his son.

Prior to Obama unmasking was extremely rare – it is technically an unconstitutional search adn a violation of your 4th amendment rights.

Throughout the obama administration it became increasingly more common.
In 2015 Obama severely relaxed the rules on unmasking and it became rampant.

Many many Obama appointees with ZERO need to know where routinely unmasking US Persons. Samantha Powers (actually her staff) was doing several a day.
Susan Rice was doing hundreds.

Both initially publicly denied this.
Both have subsequently under oath admitted it.

Powers and Rice are not the only problems.

There was a separate enormous problem at NSA itself.

Analysts were on their own querying for information on celebrities, or relatives or spouses or girlfriends. The FISA court produced a damning report on this.
It does not appear that was “politically driven”.

I expect that “unmasking” is going to be either addressed in this memo, or separately as a significant part of the House IC findings when they finally release those.

“unmasking” was a scandal – and definitely NOT a phony one.

Nunes was BTW completely exhonerated by the House Ethics committee.
Even though the stalled for like 9 months and did not bother to hear the issue until he finanlly said – my recusal from chairing the House IC was voluntary – if you are not going to hear the complaint, I am returning as chair.

And you really have to be dense as a doorknob not to understand Nunes is up to something SUSPICIOUS when he even refuses to first share the memo with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) before releasing it publicly.

Not sure what you mean, Jay. The House Intelligence Committee made the memo available to all members of the House of Reps, as long as it was viewed in a secure facility.
It was also made available to the FBI Director, who basically fired Andrew McCabe the day after he viewed it. Wray was given the opportunity to redact anything that he believed would compromise “sources and methods.”

My understanding is that Burr wanted an actual copy of the memo, and Nunes feared that, once it got into the hands of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it would be leaked.

Now, the entire memo, with limited redactions, is to be made available to the public.

I may be “dense as a doorknob”, but I understand that protecting the FBI from charges that it interfered in an election, on behalf of one candidate over another, is not Congress’ job. The purpose of congressional oversight is to preserve the balance of power among the 3 branches of government, and to protect and inform the American public.

Jay, good question. After it is released we may know. Right now it is just road kill or it is next to a constitutional crisis.

The problem I have with stuff you post is the limited sources that our available on the subject. On this issue CNN reported three unnamed sources as those telling this issue and every other article available is built on the CNN report.

So, CNN also reports that Chris Wray will quit if the memo is released, even though he saw no threat to national security in the memo, and no one including John Kelly, with whom Wray has been meeting all week, is claiming that he has threatened to quit. CNN claims that “sources say” Kelly “thinks Wray might” quit.

So, CNN’s sources know what John Kelly thinks? This is nonsense.

I have no doubt that Wray is in a very, very tough spot. The FBI is under fire, and may need a massive housecleaning, which he will have to do, but he wants to keep the agency satisfied with his leadership and his ability to stand up to the president.

If he threatened to quit, that might stop Trump from allowing the memo to be released. But, he apparently has not threatened to quit.

Nearly everything argued by the democrats, by the left, by the media, by Jay is presumptions regarding what other people think.

Prof. Tribe a constitutional scholar that I often do not agree with but who I respect,
has been spraying absolute garbage about obstruction of Justice.

But then pretty much the same garbage has permeated many of the court cases involving Trump.

The 9th circuit has on multiple occasions found Trumps actions unconstitutional because of his Intent – which they purport to know.

An act that is perfectly legal is done by party A is also perfectly legal if done by party B.
Without regard for intent.

The power of the executive rests in Pres. Trump – like it or not.

It is an agregious violation fo the rule of law to say that Obama could have issued EO ### and it would have been constitutional – because there is no evidence of Bad intent on the part of Obama.
But should Trump issue exactly the same EO in exactly the same words that EO is unconstitional because of his “intent”.

Not only is that lawless, it is litterally the courts saying that the voters can not have what they wanted even though the constitution allows it because their candidate talked about it during the election.

Intent is a required element of many crimes – including Obstructuion.
It is not the SOLE element.

There is no act that is a crime ONLY if you have intent.

There are however acts that are NOT crimes ONLY because you do not have intent.

a crime requires a BAD act AND intent.
Not a good act and bad intentions.

Further I get really tired at theis prsumption by the left the median and Jay that they know the thoughts of the rest of us.

The story the media is working right now is a process story, and absent really egregious issues, no one will ultimately care.

If the memo is released who will care if Burr did or did not get slighted ?
No one will care if the changes were small or large.
No one will really care if DOJ/FBI got a chance to comment.

All people will care about is are the facts alleged significant, and are they true.
I do not think it will do more than confirm much of what we already know. That makes it of marginal significance.
I do think that the allegations made will not be refuted.

Those are the only things of consequence that will ultimately matter.

Everything Jay is frothing over is inconsequential. And much of it is wrong.

And this is just as true as the story that the DOJ/FBI were denied access to it.

Not only have they received copies, they have commented and they have requested changes.

This is “fake news”.

Nunes and the house IC were extremely careful to follow existing procedures on this.
It took time and more process and approval than merely Devon Nunes acting alone.

This memo summarizes thousands of pages of classified documents – it is therefore automatically itself a classified document until determined otherwise.

There are rules for the handling of classified documents.
I know that after Hillary, those on the left think you just toss them arround like pez,
but the house was trying hard to both get the document disseminated AND follow the rules.

DOJ/FBI have the document – they are BTW free to share it wither Burr. They are MORE free to do so than the House IC.

I am pretty sure that Grassley has confirmed that he has seen it. He is free to share it with Burr or the rest of the Senate IC.

I am actually pretty sure that Burr has seen it.

Pretty much every republican in the House has seen it.
Those democrats who wish to have seen it.

The House has been reluctant to distribute copies – instead allowing members to go to the Capital SCIF and read it themselves.

The house has the power to declassify anything it wants – but the process for doing so is cumbersome.

HOWEVER the administration has the power to grant access to whoever they please – the House does not. The house has more constrained choices.

This is all also much ado over nothing.

First, it is near certain this memo is getting made public.

While I think that broad access within congress was desireable – and the House did ultimately manage that. as well as access by DOJ/FBI this is a rare event – the house does not unilaterally declassify material regularly. They are still trying to work out the process.

At the same time I really do not consider it evidence of some huge conspiracy to be caustious about granting access to something that your are being severaly criticized for granting any access to that is inevitably going to be made public.

Is Den. Burr or the DOJ irrepairably harmed by having to wait a few days

I’ve seen the underlying Intelligence documents behind the #NunesMemo, and it is a distortion of the facts. Anyone can selectively pick documents out of a huge storyline and cook up a case. That doesn’t make it true.

The answer is to release ALL of the supporting documents, including the FISA applications, the names of all of those in the DOJ/FBI who worked on those applications. If Nunes’ memo has distorted anything, we will be able to see exactly what he selectively omitted.

It is rarely possible to selectively pick documents from a large body and demonstrate the story that you wish to demonstrate that is at odds with the truth.

It is possible to “cherry pick” to show only part of the truth. But what is shown is still True.
It is possible – though usually in statistical contexts, not something like this, to cherry pick to imply a trend that is false. But that is very specific to trends, and it is ONLY the TREND that is false.

I would further note that all the claims that the favors, the left, the media, the FBI/DOJ have been falsified over time. There is already little left. most of us do not need a memo for that.
Conversely the evidence that there was a movement starting in the Obama administration to tip the election to Clinton is compelling.

Either the FBI botched the Clinton investigations, or it knowingly whitewashed her.
That is pretty much beyond any doubt.

And that set of bad facts makes the evidence that the FBI also conspired with the Clinton campaign to prevent Trump’s election and to get him impeached afterward.

The only open questions regarding all of this is was this a number of actors independently working towards the same goal through their own personal biases, or was there and actual conspiracy and if so how broad.

I do think they all relatively independently decided on their own that the ends justifies the means and each in their own way made choices – that many of the others knew about and were able to take advantage of to make this malfeasance come about.

The end result is still the same. A formal conspiracy might be a little easier to swallow
The problem with wide spread deep bias combined with people who do not even have the concept of rule of law as part of their values, is that you do not need a formal conspiracy to have people acting together to do evil – for the purported greater good.

We saw a version of this in Nazi Germany. The entire german people did not conspire together formally to murder jews. The number of people who knew exactly what was going on was very small. At the same time large numbers of germans knew bits and peices and contributed in some way to a whole that they did not necescarily see. They did so for what they bought as a greater good. It is incredibly easy to do evil purportedly for the greater good.

Dave. Sometimes civil discourse does not work. You are pig hog with no regard for others. Your volume of often incoherent words do not mean you make sense. You just take up space and impede any discussion.

“Dave. Sometimes civil discourse does not work” – that is correct – demands that others do as you wish often do not work – no matter how civilly they are made.
Politeness is a tool, it is not a weapon. Persuasion requires convincing the other person that what you want is in THEIR interests. Your failure to persuade reflects your lack of skill or the fact that what you want is not in the others interest.

I have complete regard for your rights, something you do not share.
I have as little interest in your wishes as you have in mine.

You have no property or privacy rights in this blog. You desire to impose your wishes regarding that by force – if you were able reflect the fact that you think your wishes trump other peoples actual rights.

You think you are owed something – and you are completely open about that.
You think that want of yours is somehow a right and that want trumps the rights of others.

What constitutes a right and what constitutes a wish is relevant specifically to avoid the garbage arguments you are making.

Regard for others means respecting their rights.
It does NOT mean demanding they subordinate their rights to your wants.
If does NOT even mean they must subordinate their wants to your wants.

Each of us owes a duty to all to not infringe on their rights.
That is a NEGATIVE duty. It does not require us to do anything.
It merely requires us to NOT infringe on the rights of others.

That is a sustainable model for society and government.
It requires minimal effort to enforce – a government that will use force against those few who will use force to infringe on the rights of others.
It is a simple model for limited government.

You wants and needs impose absolutely no positive duty on others.
You are responsible for your own life – no one else.
You must breath on your own, you must drink and eat, and shelter yourself.

You are free to reach mutually satisfactory agreements with others to cooperate for your mutual benefit – but that is a choice – a good one, not an obligation, not a duty, not a right.

“You are pig hog with no regard for others.”

Insults are among the worst means of trying to get someone else to do as you wish.

“Your volume of often incoherent words do not mean you make sense”
Words have meaning. Volume is inapplicable. Its use is merely deceipt by false analogy.

” You just take up space and impede any discussion.”
Back with the ouija board telling me what my intentions are.

Shoudl she have been elected there is already enough to impeach clinton in the current one.

Clinton and her campaign and though Clinton made far heavier use of cuttouts than Trump she also has a reputation for being far more Hands on that Trump – litterally dictating the color of the chick costume for the heckler that cheased Trump arround.

Clinton took OPO research – it does nto matter than it came from Russia,
and walked it (through surogates) to the FBI where it was used unvetted to investigate a political opponent.

JUST MAYBE she could get away with that through to election day.
But if she did not distance herself during the trransition and shut the investigation down on inauguration she is guilty of pretty close to exactly what Nixon was.

It is not the OP research that is the problem
It is not where it came from that is the problem.

It is that it was false and sold to government for the purpose of rigging an election.
Though the PRIMARY culpability rests with DOJ/FBI until the election.

As an out of office candidate Clinton is free to try to persuade government to F’up her opponent.
But FBI/DOJ are NOT free to oblige.

All should appreciate the FBI speaking up. I wish more of our leaders would. But take heart: American history shows that, in the long run, weasels and liars never hold the field, so long as good people stand up. Not a lot of schools or streets named for Joe McCarthy.

He has admitted under oath that he leaked classified documents.
He has stated under oath several things that are contradicted by the testimony of other DOJ witnesses.

Up until Trump fired him – the left hated him.

I follow him in my twitter feed and his tweets are really bizarre.

It is the left seeking to silence people. It is the left seeking to keep things in the dark.
It is the left that is ranting about fictitious russians everywhere, it is the left that is seeking to restart the cold war. It is the left that most resembles McCarthy.

What I am reading is that the memo confirms what we already know, that opposition to its release was partisan posturing of the worst sort, that the FBI/DOJ opposed its release – not because of anything related to national security but to cover their own asses.

There is nothing in it that exposes a source that was not already made public.
There is nothing in it that exposes methods beyond what is already known of the FISA process.
There is nothing in it that illegitimately impairs an ongoing investigation.
There is nothing in it that should be classified today.

There should now be a demand that the supporting documentation get declassified to the greatest extent possible.

The memo itself makes clear that neither it nor its sources should remain classified, and that the DOJ/FBI should have turned over to congress everything they were asking for long ago.

It also makes it clear that Comey and the FBI were engaged in the McCarthyesque Russian witch hunt.

It further makes the DOJ/FBI look small – because when you make a huge deal over such a small thing, it makes you less consequential.

Here we have this nothing investigation, based on garbage, ongoing for a year, that never finds anything, and yet, almost the entire upper echelon of the DOJ/FBI is intimately involved.

This is not the material of the FBI/DOJ battling John Dillenger.

This is about a dozen top people in FBI/DOJ chasing after dirt on an insignificant member of the Trump Campaign for nearly a year and finding NOTHING.

If this was a failed investigation conducted by some Rookie FBI agent with minimal supervision it would be a giant Nothing – and we would wonder why the House Intelligence committee was investigating.

But it was the centerpeice for what was at that time the most significant investigation in the country – and it was much ado about nothing.

The Smallness of this memo reflects on the smallness of the entire Trump Russia stupidity.

This also explains why the release of this memo seems so convoluted.
This is the only time this law has EVER been used before.
The house is litterally trying to figure the process out for the first time step by step.

I fully agree with Turley – this is long overdue. If the left wishes to criticize republicans on this the most hypocritical aspect of this is that 7 days ago they REAUTHORIZED section 702 and instead of narrowing it as many have asked and plenty of us have begged for, they actually expanded it.

Though I would note sacrificing liberty for the Chimera of safety is incredibly bi-partisan.

Enough republicans opposed that with the help of democrats 702 would be dead.

Dave, great article. Never knew tbis existed. Nice to know there are a few members willing to uncover the overreach of government. Maybe this will be the first baby step to stop the drip that is leaking rights and freedoms turning this country into anything but free!

Have you read it ?
If so can you explain why anything in it would be considered “highly classified” ?
What is in it that explains the FBI, DOJ, and House democrats fighting to bar its release ?

I think it provides evidence that the FBI/DOJ used the classification process to impede the public disclosure of political corruption.

It is pretty much exactly what I expected, there is very little NEW.
There is nothing that should have been deprived to congress or the public – nothing that should not have been made public from the very begining.

It is almost entirely about the Steele Dossier. It pretty much confirms that the entire upper echelon of the FBI and DOJ was involved in the Trump Campaign Surveilance.
It confirms that those involved KNEW that it was crap from the start, and that they KNEW that the source was highly biased, and that they KNEW that it was produced by Fusion GPS and requested by the DNC/Clinton campaign. That little effort was made to verify it and that what effort was made failed.

While it does not Prove there is absolutely no other evidence of whatever it is that the left thinks they are looking for, it paints an incredibly powerful circumstantial case that there is not and never has been any consequential evidence. That the Steele Dossier and aparently the report of Papadolis’s drunk rantings is pretty close to all that there ever was and remains all that there is.

That the Trump investigation was from the start POLITICAL, not based on any real substance, and that there never was a “there there”.

It is also damning in that it exposes just haw weak the FISA court review process is, and just how easy it is for the FBI/DOJ to get a FISA Warrant to surveil someone.

It is therefore Damning to democrats and republicans alike – who all just voted to extend and expand section 702 which authorizes this.

Dave what we have is the same thing we have had for almost 13 months. Most of what has been reported has already been reported. The right of center to far right citizens will only have their position supported further. The lift of center to the Jay bleeding heart liberals will say this is nothing and does nothing to change the fact that Trump is a traitor.

What I find interesting now is the Democrats have prepared their own memo and it now has to go for a vote to release. I dont bet much, but I would bet a dinner or a few drinks that the Democrats will load their memo with confidential information that would keep most members from allowing that to be released. Once that happens, the dems will raise holy hell that the GOP is being biased and they should allow their memo released. The GOP will say they could not release it due to secrets. The left will be further energized to block and hang Trump and the right will be left to defend their action.

And all we get is further tribal hatred and division. Like Joe Manchin said two days ago, “Washington sucks”

As I noted before with the Nunes Memo – there is not only no reason it should be classified, but no reason that the supporting documents should not be released possibly with MINOR redactions.

The Nunes Memo does pretty much draw a line in the sand.

Republicans have pretty much come out asserting there never was much of anything there.

That is the real significance of this.

The “narative” is the DOJ/FBI investigated the Trump campaign based on little more than really bad oposition research by the opposing party.

Is that our idea of how government should work ?

Can Trump feed OPO research to the DOJ/FBI to start an investigation of Sanders, Oprah, …

But if the democrats wish to produce their own memo – more power to them.

Go for it!!!

If it ends up with lots of Classifed information in it – I say declassify everything that can possibly be declassified.

I suspect there was little about that that EVER had much basis for being classifed. The Nunes Memo has reinforced that belief.

If Schiff and Co actually have something lets get it out there.

I strongly suspect they do not.
Why ? Because Republicans have just bet the farm on this Memo.

Reading it I highly doubt any of the facts are wrong – those are far too easy to corroberate.

The most relevant question is – as Jay says, are they cherry picking.
Is this a picture of a tiny part of something far larger, or is it really “all there is”.

The memo states there is more – but not much, and not of substance.
IF that is not true – republicans are in deep shit.

I think the odds of there being more of substance is miniscule.

This is a huge bet by republicans – it is extremely likely they made their bet with FULL knowledge of everything that is there.

But again – let democrats respond.

I do not expect much more than what Jay has said
“Ha, Ha – nothing there”

That right. There has been no substance to any of this from the begining.

I am not sure whether people are going to be able to grasp that
The significance is there has been nothing in any of this – from the begining.

The DOJ/FBI investigated a bunch of planted rumours, found nothing, kept trying desparately, found nothing, but the left managed to keep the entire country in a lather for almost two years over NOTHING.

That is the big takeaway.

Democrats should be free to demonstrate otherwise.

IF not – it is time for this to end.

I would further note – though he gets only limited mention – Rosenstein is part of this.
He MUST go.

Anyone involved in this investigation, anyone who signed their name on a warrant that had no substance should be fired.

Of course I read it.
Note: last week they were reported to have redacted some troublesome security blips from the Memo.

The memo doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t know?
So, you still don’t know if the Dossier was the only source for the FISA Warrant. Dozens of lawyers on the Twittersphere (many who participated in FISA hearings) have stated the court doesn’t accept single citations- to issue a warrant requires a bigger bag of evidence.

And the Memo doesn’t mention that Carter Page was already under investigation, prior to Dossier assembly:

“Page first came to the FBI’s attention in 2013, when a Russian suspected to be linked to the country’s intelligence agencies identified him in a recorded conversation as someone who might be able to be leveraged for information. The Post’s original story about the Page warrant noted that this incident was part of the warrant application, which isn’t mentioned in the newly released memo. There may also have been other components of the warrant that haven’t yet been made public.”

Twelve of the 14 judges who have served this year on the most secret court in America are Republicans and half are former prosecutors. The law enforcement agents who applied for the FISA warrant were mostly if not all Republicans.

Yeah, they manufactured or turned blind eyes to skimpy information to get a Republican President. For each of the renewed warrants. Right.

And the agents who ask for the warrants SWEAR IN GOOD FAITH they believe the evidence is true. They can only be prosecuted if they fraudulently invent or withhold contrary evidence.

Whether there should be a FISA court or not is a separate issue. To quote your oft repeated retort (over and over and over)if you don’t like the law, change it.

Your article is in error. Page first came to the attention of the FBI when page was approached by the Russians and Page contacted the FBI.

NO Page was NOT already under investigation.

There is a reason that Carter Page – a Distinguished US Naval Academy Graduate, a former navy intelligence officer, with an MA in National Security from Georgetown, an MBA from NYU, and a PHd for SOAS London is suing the media for Slander.

Because alot of what is reported about him is FALSE.

Regardless, you and the media are engaged in a game of deflection.

Warrants are justified by PROBABLE CAUSE – not claims of prior interest.

Agents in the FBI can have said “Hmm, I am interested in Carter Page” every year since 2000, that does not create the basis for a warrant.

Nor do prior mistakes on the part of FBI/DOJ justify repeating them.

Either you have probable cause – or you should not be asking for a warrant.

If you ask for one without probable cause – then you are lying under oath to the court.
That would be WORSE than anything Papadoulis or Flynn purportedly did.

No probable cause does NOT mean lots of unverified salacious allegations.

The WaPo story you mention is exactly that – a story. We have had plenty of those.
Most have either been completely false or highly inaccurate in the details.

I would further note that alot of what in in the Memo comes from TESTIMONY before congress under OATH.

As an example McCabe TESTIFIED under oath that without the Steele Dossier they warrants would not have been requested or issued.
So who do you beleive an anonymous source story from WaPo or Andy McCabe under oath ?

There was never a basis for an investigation, there is still no basis for an investigation. The FBI started an investigation using what it knew was OPO research paid for by a political campaign. Made little initial effort to verify it, ultimately was unable to, and has still never uncovered any evidence of anything.

I would note the document says the warrant for surveilance of Carter Page was for 90 days and was renewed 3 additional times – so it ran for one full year – from July 2016-July 2017.

During that entire time the FBI was never able to add any substanative aditional findings to its Warrant Renewal requests.

In other words not only did the FBI never have anything, but it has also never found anything.

A part of what you seem unable to grasp is the significance of what is ABSENT.

This memo could not exist – if the FBI started an investigation – even on flimsy grounds but was subsequently able to find additional evidence.
This memo reveals that there never was anything and that nothing more was ever found.

This memo also justifies firing Comey.

This memo demonstrates that the FBI/DOJ obstructed the congressional investigation,
And that BTW actually would be “obstruction of justice”

I do not think this tells us much we did not already know.
But it does tell us two new things:

It strenghtens the certainty of what we already know.
It greatly increases the probability that FBI/DOJ through July 2017 never found anything in this investigation.

Dave, you can not convince someone like Jay that has complete confidence in government that the warm water he is in is nothing more than a nice warm bath. He fails to realize that the actions taken by a few members in the FBI were another small step in the infringement of the rights insured by the constitution and that warm bath is actually the cooking of his freedoms. Once they find a FISA judge willing to accept their flemsy excuse to renew a warrant for a year without any real support, they will milk that cow until its dry.

When there are almost 1800 requests for warrants submitted to the FISA court and not one is rejected, you can not convince someone like me that all 1800 were perfect and not one should not have been rejected. No one is perfect and one of those request must have had an issue had the proper oversight existed.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

That is the text of the 4th amendment – a FISA warrant is a warrant – it must meet the requirements of the 4th amendment.

There is also centuries of case law.

Note – a warrant requires the applicant to provide and oath of affirmation.

The oath is a sworn statement by the applicant that probable cause exists.

The Steele document would support Probable cause – IF AND ONLY IF sufficient portions of it have been verified and found credible AND no consequential errors were found.
Not only is that not true – we KNOW it was never true.

Law enforcement is NOT permitted to say – we have this horrible allegation – that constitutes probable cause.

There is lots of case law about determining whether some allegation by a source constitutes probable cause.

The point being to be used for a search warrant the Steele Dossier hard to be verified FIRST.

We do not know exactly what those signing the FISA warrant applications swore to.

But we inarguably know that probable cause did not exist.

Flynn plead to lying NOT under oath to an FBI agent – the application for the FISA warrant is a SWORN Statement.

If it is knowingly false, or even not knowingly True, that would constitute ATLEAST the same 18 USC 1001 violation that Flynn is charged with.

If we are going to be prosecuting people for innaccuracy – I have zero problems with charging every single person who signed any of these FISA applications.

This is NOT a little deal. It is NOT luke Warm.

Nor is it about “Trump”.

IT is about lawlessness.

Recently we all became aware of the mess regarding the Bundy Prosecutions.

Our system of law REQUIRES the government to play by the rules, to no lie or cheat – even when it is going after people we think are absolutely evil.

Whether Koresch, Bundy, McVeigh, Trump, or …..

When government behaves lawlessly – we live in tyrany.

Maybe a somewhat begnign tryany, but an arbitrary and capricious tryany nonetheless.

This is not about Trump.

But it is about using the power of government against those you do not like without a legitimate basis to do so.

In this instance, the misconduct of DOJ/FBI has put the country through 2 years of hell.

But even if this was about some small time suspected Drug Dealer – this would be WRONG!!.

All that would be different – is it is unlikely we would have ever found out, and most certainly the House would not have dug into it.

Then we can have you, the left, the media etc screetching oh god no!!! for several weeks before we end up with primary source documents that SAY THE SAME THING.

There is a huge difference between this memo and a story in WaPo.

The memo is written by people who have put their NAMES to what they are asserting PUBLICLY.

They have asserted that their conclusions are drawn from specific evidence – actual testimony and an actual review of classified documents.

In many instances they have specifically stated Comey testified X, or McCabe testified Y.

There is no basis besides personal trust to rely on Wapo o NYT there stories are rooted in “some anoymous current or former administration figure says they heard X”.

You have to Trust WaPo, you have to trust the reporter, You have to trust the reporter vetted the source, you have to trust that a source you do not even know actually knows what they are talking about, and that they are not lying.

“Dave, you can not convince someone like Jay that has complete confidence in government that the warm water he is in is nothing more than a nice warm bath”

Keep making dumb inaccurate statements like this and fate will shove your head under a bathtub filled with warm water.

I don’t have ANY confidence in tRUMP government.

The rest of the govt sometimes good sometimes not.

In the Mueller investigation and related peeks into tRumpian traitorous malfeasance, I see those investigating him and his unsavory associates and family as rodent exterminators: sometimes the process is a little messy, but the rats have got to be removed nevertheless.

You seem to be under the delusion that because almost no one “trusts trump”
that we must beleive everything bad anyone says about him.

I think most everyone here would have no problems Identifying several issues were Trump is demonstrably wrong.

But being wrong on some issues does not make every lie told about Trump into truth.

It does not mean you can say whatever you please – and expect to be believed.

I do not trust Trump.
I do not trust the media either
I do not trust the left either.
I trust government bureaucrats less still.
I trust most republicans in congress less,
I trust most democrats in congress less still.

There is a lot of DESERVED mistrust.

What separates you – is that you trust everyone and everything that is anti-trump.

“In the Mueller investigation and related peeks into tRumpian traitorous malfeasance, I see those investigating him and his unsavory associates and family as rodent exterminators: sometimes the process is a little messy, but the rats have got to be removed nevertheless.”

What distinguishes the Mueller investigation from the prior FBI DOJ investigation ?

Is there some fact we have subsequently learned that makes something different ?

We can hope that Mueller’s investigation is less politically corrupt than that of DOJ/FBI.

Thought there are plenty of hints of probems – the people he has picked, the fact that several people who have been removed for cause were also part of the DOJ/FBI investigation,
That Mueller has a reputation for botching big cases, still we do not have the same kind of certain knowledge that Mueller has gone rogue.

Gowdy:”As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit his investigation.”

What the hell else do you expect a former prosecutor to say that plans to go back into law after this session of congress. He is no different than the other 320 member of congress that think the 702 crap is fine and dandy. He will want to use any means possible to convict people that he can get away with. We need to replace all of the 320 with those like the other 198 congressional members that voted against 702 that find rights and freedoms are more important than infringement of freedoms in the name of security.

But for many people, they could give a rats ass what rights are infringed upon as long as Donald Trump is hung with some illegal act. They will think 702 is the greatest thing since the sexual revolution until they become a victim of judicial overreach. Won’t matter that they find no evidence to support Russian collusion as long as they find something.

Yeah RonP, perhaps we could clone Nunes and get 435, or at least 238 new members. Nah, that would take too long, Trump in another “consultation” with Nunes, might want an intelligence test: “What does recuse mean?”. Correct answer: “I’ll lay low for a while, then get back in the fray when Donnie whistles.”

McCain is like all the other career politicians. He has been there too long and accepts that government is doing good for the people all the time.

There are just a few people in this country that find the constitutional rights more important than security. The United States was considered the beacon of freedoms in the world for years. Now we rank 17th in freedoms based on the CATO institutes analysis using economic, personal and legislative issues in their analysis. We improved from 23rd in 2016 to 17th in 2017, mostly due to reductions in regulations, but how can we be considered the free world leader when there are 16 other countries freer than we are?

I keep commenting the more Libertarian position on freedom and security and as long as the outcome of the Russian investigation removes Trump from office, the how it happens is not important to some as long as it happens. How far down do we need to move in the rankings of freedom before people wake up and see what is happening? Probably many more notches as those that think like the CATO Institute are far and few between.

The ‘somebody’ is WSJ, decidedly conservative. If they’re ‘fluffing’ the story you know the Republican version is bull shit.

And I don’t seem to recall you EVER calling out tRump for his adulterous behavior.

Strzok is exactly the kind of Anti Russian Pro American Patriot Hero we celebrated here in the US, until the Russian mole tRump undermined those safeguards by undermining the agencies who serve to protect us against FOREIGN intervention.

You have spewed tweet after tweet regarding Daniels.
I do not think you have a leg to stand on regarding moralizing.

Regardless that is not the issue.

The Strzok page situation is within the workplace.
Just about every employer in the world frowns on relationship between co-workers.
They are generally barred from working on the same projects.

Strzok and page were working on the same investigations until they were caught.
I would be surprised if the FBI allows a husband and wife to work on the same team.

Their relationships with their spouses are their own business.

You do not seem to recall alot of things.

I find adultery morally repugnant. Like Perot, I think that if your spouse can not trust one of the most serious commitments you have made in your life – no one can.
And I have said that repeatedly HERE.

I also distinguish CONSISTENTLY between what is or can be law and what can not.

Again I DID NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.

I think that adultery is a really good reason not to vote for someone.
I think that it is perfectly appropriate for your employer to remove you from any position of trust as a consequence.
Adulterous or not, your employer can and should bar employees within a relationship from working together.
And I am fairly certain the FBI has such rules and that it has terminated agents in the past for violating them.

A persons relationship to their spouse is NOT the business of government as government.
Though it can be the business of government as employer.

What is patently obvious is that you are completely oblivious to facts, and have no ability to excercise critical judgement.

You claim a bunch of things about your past. What is obvious about your present is that you see everything through a blue lense.

Anything harmful to Trump – good, even if you have to flipp everything you ever beleived to get there, anything good for trump – bad even it you have to abandon anything you ever beleived to get there.

I do not know whether Strzok is an uber patriot, or anti-russian.

In fact several of his texts among the most damning are where HE challenges the views of his higher ups. Where HE asserts that McCabe is too conflicted to investigate Clinton. Where HE tells us that Comey tried to pressure McCabe to leave the clinton investigation. Where HE tells us that the Fix is in on the Clinton investigation and everyone knows it and the Press remarks are kibuki theater, where HE notes that Obama met with Comey twice during the investigation – Comey has testified under oath that he did not meet with Obama during the Clinton investigation.

I know that Strzok should not have been part of the Clinton or Trump investigations, and I know that he provides the evidence demonstrating that many others should not have either.

We also know as FACT, that McCabe arranged Strzok’s interview of Flynn under false pretenses.
Flynn was told Strzok was breifing him about security protocols, NOT interviewing him.
And we know that Strzok recomended against charging Flynn.

Those are the things I actually know about Peter Strzok

He may or may not be a patriot – we have no basis for knowing that.
There are lots and lots of things we do not know about Peter Strzok.
I do not pretend to know those, though you seem to rush there.

What I do know is that he should not have been allowed or allowed himself to participate in either the Clinton and Trump investigations, and that he provides the evidence that others held personal biases that they acted on that even further disqualified them.

You are blind to all that.

ButI have zero doubt that if red and blue were recersed here you would be calling for Strzok’s head.

Russia is not our enemy. She is a nation whose interests sometimes align and sometimes diverge from ours. She is a sufficiently powerful nations that we must be very concerned when we are at odds.

I am not aligned with Russia. There is a great deal to criticize about both Putin and Russia.
I am also not preparing to go to war with Russia,.

Nor am I looking to impose sanctions – something I think is univeraally a bad idea and not the busness of government regardless, because I am pissed about the outcome of an election and looking for someone to blame.

The actual evidence is that Russia’s actions regarding our election were inconsequential focussed on issues and not candidates, and at worst trying to play the sides against each other and create conflict and distrust. That there goal was not to change the outcome of the election, but to get us to destruct the integrity of our own election process.
They put little effort into that – and because something the left did nto anticipate happened and it needed a scape goat, the left magnified and twisted what russia actually did giving Putin exactly the results he wanted AFTER the election.

And what you left out of your blockheaded reading of the ‘fluff’ article was that it concluded the text messages between FBI Agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page show NO EVIDENCE of a conspiracy against President Trump.

Why is another interesting question – it is not THE critical question, but it is one that we should answer.

Did they fail through incompetence ?
That is the most favorable explanation to the FBI.
That somehow miraculously 2 years of FBI incompetence nearly all benefited Clinton and then all harmed Trump.

What seems more likely true is that the FBI/DOJ investigations were highly politically biased from the start.

The most damaging explanation would be a conspiracy.

I am not interested in the unsource conclusions or the press.
In case you have not figured it out we should all be way past treating anything published claiming multiple unnamed current or former government sources as credible.

When you have someone who is willing to put their NAME to some of this and state something is true based on EVIDENCE – I am more interested.
But better still – provide the evidence.

Beyond that any claim there is no evidence of a conspiracy is patently false.
There is PLENTY of evidence.

You and your author do not know the difference between evidence and proof.

With what we know today – an “organized formal” conspiracy is unlikely – but still possible.
The most likely “conspiracy” is individuals working together for a common cause.
That is pretty close to self evident.

“Mr. Page’s mannerisms amid the unfolding Russia investigations have emerged as a sort of Washington sideshow. Despite being under scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators as a possible agent of Russia, Mr. Page has waged a near-constant public affairs campaign, appearing on TV news shows and engaging with reporters, sometimes with obscure GIFs or movie clips.

For months, Mr. Page showed up regularly, uninvited and unannounced, at the secure offices of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, where he dropped off documents he had compiled himself. One was his own dossier in which he claimed he was the victim of a hate crime by the Hillary Clinton campaign because he was a Catholic and a man.”

PS. The intercepted intel from the Russian agent who Page passed oil industry information quotes the Russian as describing Page as “an idiot.”

Page is behaving much as someone who was falsely and publicly accused of being a russian spy does.

I hope that you never are placed in such a situation.

Regardless, your or the presses oppinion on Page’s mannerism is irrelevant.

People with Page’s credential’s are rarely idiots.

Even if all the above were true – we do not spy on americans because they are idiots, or because we do not like their personality.

Or because false allegations and salacious rumous are spread about them.

I would note that false scapegoating people is a common technique of Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is the source of the “Benghazi was the result of an internet video” lie – even while she was admitting to foreign leaders it was an organized terrorist attack.
To protect the lie she pushed for the false prosecution of some poor peon out in California, whose great crime was making a video no one ever saw casting islam in a bad light.

Now we have clinton funding false gossip about Trump and those in his campaign, and spreading it to the press and the FBI and pushing a criminal investigation based on tabloid garbage she paid for.

If you are paying attention he is also the person who READ THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS used to draft the memo.

I would suggest that you might want to read Gowdy’s remarks in a different way.

As saying “I Trust that Mueller will do the right thing – unlike the corrupt people at DOJ/FBI and secure his warrants properly – because if he does not He is going to be the next person in front of this committee.”

The fears regarding Mueller are that he is going to continue this garbage proccess crime route.

NO ONE has as of yet presented evidence that anything but the most mundane claims in the Dossier are true.

The requirement for a warrant REMAINS that the assertions have a high probability of being true.

Is there some claim in the Steele Dossier that you or anyone else has EVER been willing to say “has a high probability of being true”

Regardless, it is the obligation of the FBI – to the FISA court, to the HSPCI, to the american people to not merely verify whatever ti uses as the basis for a warrant – but to demonstrate that it did so. In this instance the absence of evidence is proof of failure. The duty the FBI owes to the 4th amendment is an AFIRMATIVE DUTY.

The fundimental claim of the Nunes Memo is that the allegations in the Steele Dossier was SWORN to the courts as having a high probability of being true, when they were either know false or unverified.

The fundimental issue is what the FBI did, not word parsing of the Nunes memo.

You seem to forget that Warrants are SWORN.
You may not offer to a court as the basis for a warrant information that you do not have good reason to beleive is the truth.

McCabe has testified that without the Steele Dossier the FISA warrants would not have been granted – therefore if there was anything else part of the warrant applications we know From McCabes testimony that it was inconsequential – insufficient to get a warrant.

But the standard is actually higher than that.

If FBI had 10 things justifying the warrant, an 9 were rock solid but only a single one was not likely true – that STILL would have been a serious ethical breach and possibly a crime.
Admittedly one that is almost never prosecuted, but still a crime.

When a warrant is sworn those swearing it are NOT swearing what is alleged is mostly true.
They are swearing that it is ALL probably true.

You can not lie on a single point – as noted Warrants are SWORN. Read the 4th amendment

“The FBI kept quiet about their Trump-Russia investigations, and Trump won the election. How that represents evidence of a sinister deep-state conspiracy is a question for morons to ponder.“ https://t.co/a3LTbhdy4V

When the administrative state becomes more powerful than the elected government, we are in big trouble. When James Comey considers himself above the law, and answers only to himself, not to the elected POTUS, we are in big trouble. When the FBI is permitted to stonewall the US Congress, we are in big trouble. When rank and file FBI agents are empowered to use their knowledge and leverage in the service of one political candidate and against another one, despite no evidence of any crime, we are in big trouble. When a supposedly free and fair press considers itself part of a propaganda unit for only one party’s agenda, we are in big trouble.

All of these things have been happening, and that’s been obvious for a while now. Impeaching a president is not going to end it. The way to end it is to expose it and to condemn it.

My problem with your position, Jay, is that you are totally on board with the ends justifying the means. Do you honestly believe that this sort of abuse would end, if Trump were destroyed?

Did you see that FBI guy on CNN, announcing that the FBI has been around longer than Trump has, and that the FBI would “win?” He sees the constitutional authority of the President as a threat to the FBI’s power

I might remind him that the presidency and the congress have been around longer than the FBI.

Though I beleive that Cato has raised the US from 21 to 17 under Trump.

This is a serious problem that we need to address.

At the same time it is necescary to have perspective.

I do not think there is a country with a population larger than conneticut above os.

We should be doing better.

There is a very very strong correlation between freedom and rising standard of living.

Something everyone should think about EVERY time you wish to pass a new law or regulation.

Maybe I am not absolutely right and all regulations and most laws are absolutley destructive.

But we KNOW that on the whole MOST laws and regulations do more harm than good.

We know that because otherwise freedom would not so strongly correlate to rising standard of living.

Everytime we seek to regulate, we should be asking “what am I missing ?” where is the unseen negative impact I have not thought of – because far more likely than not, we have missed something, possibly many things.

The president is answerable to the people, the congress and the courts.
NOT FBI and DOJ.

This entire mess has created an executive that is only nominally under control of the executive.

For months Andrew McCarthy has been periodically arguing there must be something damaging in the DOJ/FBI files – otherwise why doesn’t Trump just direct DOJ/FBI to turn them over.

Far too many have not gotten that anything Trump does will be presumed to be “obstruction”.
My guess is his lawyers are telling him to leave DOJ/FBI alone.

The result is they are protecting themselves.

We are seeing the same stonewalling of congress we saw under Obama – because DOJ/FBI are not answerable to anyone.

One of the problems with this mess is that Trump clearly needs to clean house.
And at the moment he can not.

Rosenstien has to go.

Too many are taking signing off on the Page Warrant too ho hum.

A warrant requires an oath that the supporting information constitutes probable cause that a crime has occured.

It is pretty much self evident it does not.

The left is OK with criminal punishment of Flynn and Papadolis for UNSWORN inaccurate statements to FBI agents. But material misrepresentations and ommissions in a SWORN warrant are OK ?

There is a debate over whether there was MORE supporting the Dossier.
There is a lot of evidence strongly suggesting there was little more.
Regardless, that can be established – release the warrant.

But more or less does nto alter the fact that “salacious and unverified” claims were KNOWINGLY presented to the court as probably true – that is the standard.
That is a far bigger deal to me than anything Flynn or Papadolis said.

The standard acceptable to the left is that people who have as long as they want to get things right, truthful and accurate, and are not obligated to say a thing, are not held accountable when they knowingly lie to the court. While those who get caught in a mistatement to the FBI in conditions that the FBI was in control of most everything – they get slammed ?

This has nothing to do with Trump for me.

We are not going to end the crap that has been going on – litterally for decades until we start holding people accountable.

Ron’s NPR article was interesting – except that I was already aware of this.

As of yet the NSA/CIA intelligenct communities role in this has not been well examined – but we have huge problems there too.

CIA, NSA, DOJ, FBI and other agencies have been botching things for decades.
This is not about Trump.

The Bundy mess made the news briefly and has faded – but it is more of the same.

The power of government being abused in targetting somebody they were out to get.

I do not think the Bundies are good people. I do not think Trump is a “good person”.

But we do not have a different set of laws for those we do not like.

I do not think the Nunes memo is a big deal – because it does nothing but confirm the abuse we already know.

I am also a bit tired of this – the problem is the upper echelon nonsense.

No the problem is huge and it pervades government – federal state and local.
It sometimes comes out as political – as right now, but fundimentally the problem is NOT political.

The problem is that government feels it is above the law. That the ends justifies the means.

The political right is often complicit in this. Massive abuses are the consequence of the destruction of the 4th amendment as a consequence of the War on Drugs.

It is BOTH true that this is worse than watergate AND the norm of conduct within law enforcement. Which is why it is so easy to ho-hum.

While the right is sometimes complicit, This failure is intgral to the ends justifies the means philosophy of the left.

We are watching this bizarre political kabucki as the left defends and calls virtuous an FBI that it has loathed while the right tries to pretend this problem is merely Obama apointments at the top.

Many of these people – the Comey’s Mueller McCabes’ Rosenstein’s, etc. are only marginally political – as in left/right democrat/republican. But they are HIGHLY political – as in they are part of an elite that regardless of the party in the whitehouse feels entitled to control government and they protect themselves.

Making this red/blue or about Trump is an open admission that we are lawless, that we can not hold people in government accountable if we can not label them as on the other side politically.

Trump and anyone else’s support of Moore wa excreble – but little better than those defending Franken.

Nor is this just about sexual harrassment.

If the left wants the scalps of Papadolis and Flynn – then we must prosecute and convict everyone who has told the same or larger lies. And that means those lying to the courts to get warrants.

Whether those are warrants for Carter Page or some alleged street corner drug dealer.

The memo said that the dossier was backed by a political entity…it did not say that it was backed, i.e. paid for, by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. It did not say that the dossier was unverified. It did not say that the British ex-spy who wrote it had also been talking to the media.

Seriously, Jay, if Trump had paid a British spy to contact his Russian sources and put together a dossier of salacious gossip, hearsay, and falsehoods on her, and then the FBI Director got a warrant based on that dossier, and used that warrant to spy on her campaign for months, extending into her presidency, you would be setting your hair on fire 🔥🔥🔥.

It doesn’t matter which side does it. It’s a gross abuse of power, it’s fraudulent, and it needs to stop. This isn’t “a game,” as CNN’s counterterrorism analyst called it, to be won or lost by the president. It’s a case of the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world, using its power to try and influence a democratic election, and , in the process, violating the Constitution of the US, as if no equal protections applied to the Trump campaign.

If they can do it to Republicans, they can do it to Democrats. And they will, unless this crap is stopped.

It is important to distinguish between what government can and can not do and what individuals can and can not do.

This is at the core of this and one of the big problems with those who see government as a benign force for good rather than a necescary evil.

You may hold whatever oppinion you want of Clintonss actions – just as you can of Trump’s
but both acted legally though possibly “deplorably”.

It is the conduct of the FBI and DOJ and those in government that is the core problem.

Neither candidate Clinton nor Trump nor did they do so have the right to use force,
but the FBI/DOJ did have the power to use force – and did so. Abridging an actual right of another is force (or threat of force) a search – is FORCE. It is a command by government to do something that individuals are not permitted to do – violate the rights of others.

Abuse of power is litterally that – it is improperly using the force that is government to do something that you are not permitted to do as an individual.

It is the most dangerous thing that can occur.
Violent criminals are less dangerous – they are individuals and government exists to punish their misconduct.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the watchmen ?

It is extremely dangerous to consider government benign. To pretend that we can expand broadly the justifications for the use of force.

The most dangerous tyrants beleive they are acting for the common good.
Mao certainly did.

One of Tolkiens most inspired scenes is where Frodo offers the rung of power to Galadriel and she is temped but declines. Power is dangerous and corrupting – even for those who are good.
The tyrant working for the common good is as dangerous and evil as one working for their own interest.

It needs to be said: Donald Trump was put into office with the knowing help of a foreign enemy who sought to weaken our world leadership and has succeeded. Trump is now undermining our institutions and democracy. He is a traitor to America.

Despite a damning condemnation of the FBI, I could easily add a dozen more F’ups and coverups over the years.

reason.com/blog/2018/02/02/if-you-think-the-nunes-memo-will-discred

Trump and republicans are making a point that the FBI is only corrupt at the head.

I AM NOT.
I have no doubt there are good people in the FBI
Regardless there are many who are not, and worse good people often do bad things, particularly in encironments where they beleive they are serving a greater good.

You have decided that Trump is a vile person – so it is not possible to you that he has not done anything vile that someone accesses him of.

I do not like Trump and I did not vote for him.
But I do not like Clinton either.

I could not and did not vote for either of them.
I personally think Hillary was the more dangerous, but I still could not vote for the lessor evil.

I am glad Trump won. But that does not mean I like him, or I am not scared of what he might do, or concerned everytime he hints at using his power against others.

Conversely I like Obama.

But the actual evidence shows, that like him or not – he was the president that you and I fear in Trump.

Obama stiffled free speech. I do not know that he directed the IRS to target groups he did not like.
But they did. Whether he asked them to or not, he created the atmosphere where that was acceptable, and protected them when they did.

During his administration there were more warrants, and more investigation and more prosecutions for leaks, and espionage than any – possibly all prior administrations combined.
Pres. Obama sought and received warrants to spy on the press.
The only person the Obama administration gave a pass for carelessness with classified documents was Hillary Clinton. There are others who were convicted for actions less egregious than hers. To be clear – this is not about Clinton – this is about the Obama administration.

You are fixated on Russia – the Obama administration was too – fixated on currying favor with Russia, not on sanctioning and seeking conflict. The NSC prior to Obama was the domain of academics and military experts not partisans. Obama populated the NSC with rising political stars and speech writers on the NSC. These are the people who pushed the “Russian Reset” and the Iran deal. You can conclude they were right or they were wrong. But you can not conclude that the Obama administration was anything less than fawning over Russia.
The same people who were telling you that Russia interfered in our elections said that 2016 russian interference was no different than 2012 or 2008 – and The Obama administration did NOTHING after 2008, before or during 2012, or before 2016.
Rightly or wrongly – the Obama administration did not take Russia very seriously – until after Clinton lost.
Little things sometimes mean alot to people.
Clinton and Obama botched the security at Libya immediately prior to the 2012 election.
That has happened before – Reagan screwed up in Lebanon to far worse consequences.
Mistakes happen. It is how you deal with them that matters. Reagan ordered investigations and ultimately took responsibility. Clinton sought scape goats.
On the night of the attack Clinton was already looking for some dumb schmoe she could pin the mess on. Some poor schmuck who made a stupid video no one saw was targeted by Clinton and the full force of the law was brought down to make him pay – for her mistakes.
Read Pages texts to Strzok and Strzoks responses.
These are people who genuinely wanted Clinton to win the election.
At the same time they were seriously concerned about what would happen to them and to the FBI if they pushed too hard on Clinton. Clinton is infamous for her enemies lists and has a reputation for never forgetting and getting revenge on her enemies.
You really wanted as president someone like that ?
Whether you did or not the electorate did not.
There are myriads of reasons Clinton lost. Not one of which has anything to do with Russia.

No matter how badly the nation hates Trump – every poll since the election has Trump winning in a rematch.

We have had two decades of failed progressive government and nearly a decade of lawless government.

Those on the left like to play the game – if Obama has said what Trump said – the right would have gone wild. Of course in many instances Obama actually did say what Trump has said.
Still there is a point. Trump’s speach is crude and brutal in in your face and not what we expect from a President.
But the same game can be played the other way – what if Trump has DONE what Obama had done ? What if Obama ruled using the Pen and the Phone and ignored the law and constitution ?
Trump would have been impeached already.

I have large problems with hypocrits. Trump is very many things. but in washington terms he is not much of a hypocrit. Obama could have had a far better deal on immigration that Trump is giving the left now – Republicans offered on and thought that they had a deal, when Obama walked away and announced another lawless action with DACA.

The FBI and DOJ have been witholding requested information from congres and everyone else since elected. The candidate who promissed the most transparent administration ever had the least transparent ever. Conversely Trump has to get congress to work with him to make public records the DOJ/FBI are hiding from everyone.

I do not have much difficulty beleiving the same administration that faked evidence, lied about their investigation, and Tried to Frame the Bundies, that sold guns to mexican drug lords – and then covered it up, that used the IRS to go after political enemies – and then refused to prosecute the misconduct – also whitewashed Clinton and fabricated an investigation of Trump.

Nor do I need to beleive the DOJ/FBI have suddenly become corrupt to see that the Clinton and Trump/Russia investigations were bent from the start.

The FBI and DOJ have a long reputation for bad conduct and bent investigations.

Trump did not destroy out institutions – they have been broke for a long time – even before Obama.

There are plenty of facts that destroy any confidence we should have in the competence or integrity of our government – regardless of the party in power.

But you can not see that.
This entire Trump/Russia investigation – could just as easily be a Clinton/Russia investigation – onely there is FAR more evidence against Clinton.

So Carter Page went to Russia once. Bill Clinton went to russia and was paid 500K for a speach to the same people Carter Page talked with.
Do we really need to note that the Steele Dossier was a product of Russian Spies ?
Those “russian” Social media adds for the NRA were over matched with ones for BLM

This entire dodgy mess is exactly like the Benghazi was caused by an internet video garbage.
Because Clinton is unable to accept that any fault is in herself.

The FBI, and many Democrats, insisted vehemently that release of the Nunes Memo would endanger national security. Now that we've all read it, is there anyone who believes that this argument was even remotely true or honest?

We have government agencies that have been stonewalling congress, who are att the same time leaking like a sieve and selectively providing clasified documents only to favored parties.

The executive branch can classify a document, or it can declassify it and make it available to all.

Beyond that it MUST respond to requests for classified documents by congress. And those must be provided to the committees that requested them.

My problem is not that some of this information was made public, or that it was provided to congress.

It is that it was leaked rather than declassified – the former is a crime – an intentional version of the one Clinton committed while the latter is legitimate.

There is no – “but the next president is a bad person” exception to the rule of law.
Government agencies and employees – NO ONE is permitted to break the law, because a bad person might keep something that is classified – classified.

Declassify the documents so that they are legally available to everyone – or dont. Leaking classified documents should land you in jail.

The Nunes memo should provide all of us a lesson in classified documents.

There is nothing in that memo that ever should have been classified.
It is unlikely that the source documents have anything that is actually classified.

We classify far too many things, and it is incredibly hard to get them declassified – even when they say nothing you can not find on CNN.

But the failures of the system of classifying documents are a reason to fix the system of classifying documents. Not a justification for violating the law.
Nor is the election of someone you do not trust, justify violating the law.

With respect to what was provided to Senators – such as Cardin.

There is a two fold problem. The first is the house and the senate decide what they think they need to see – not the other way arround.

The second is that the executive provides information to congress – not to congressmen.
The appropriate committee should have received this.

November is a long way away, and I would not pretend these numbers mean anything – beyond that those who thought that prior numbers were carved in store were full of it.

The most recent Monmouth generic ballot poll has D’s at +2 – Do to the lopsided distribution of D’s in urban areas and the fact that unaffiliated voters tend to vote slightly republican, democrats need +4 of greater to maintain the current status quo.

If the election were held today and this particular poll is correct – Democrats would lose seats in the house.

The RCP average is +6 for D’s – but trending DOWN.

The most recent Trump approval poll was 49/49 or +0 perhaps the best he has had ever.
The average is -11, but NONE of the last 4 polls is above the average and the trend is again favorable to Trump.

Alot can happen between now and November.

But lets get past this garbage that some democratic tidal wave is inevitable.

Both parties have problems moving towards midterms.

Democrats have no message accept “we hate trump” and the success of that depends on alot more damaging news regarding the Russia farce, and that is unlikely.

Republicans have a building wave with the economy, but the economy can be fickle.
It is not likely to falter before the election – there are many many good things happening, but there remain some bad signs too.

Can we ask consider what we expect with respect to government outside the context of Trump or Clinton or …. ?

Answers already exist to these questions – though they are respected more in breach.

What is the standard that must be met for government to start and investigation of someone ?
Is an anonymous rumour of unspecified misconduct sufficient ?
Must a crime be alleged ?

Assuming that some trigger justifying an investigation has occured – without sufficient basis for a warrant what would you permit a warantless government investigation to do ?
Is law enforcement free to talk to whoever they please ? Can they compel cooperation ? In a weakly based investigation should there be any penalty for not cooperating ? Or providing law enforcement less than accurate information ? Without a warant should law enforcement be able to gain records from others ? Your Bank? you phone records ? Your credit cards ? Your online accounts ?

What constitutes probable cause ?
The 4th amendment requres that the evidence presented to seek a warrant is sworn. Courts are not research organizations, warants are sworn so that the courts may rely on what is in them.
So what is the standard for the information presented in a warrant ?

Warrant requests are “ex parte” – only one side, in this case law enforcement presents their case. There is no one to argue the other side. In those rare instances were “ex parte” arrangements are allowed, the only party before the court has a high duty to present all exculpatory evidence – is that appropriate ?

Most people obey the law because it is the right thing to do. This is one of the reasons that ignorance of the law is not an excuse. We do not always know what the law is, but we are presumed to know what “the right thing to do (or more normally NOT do) is.

But some people only obey the law because if they are caught there are consequences.

Trump is president – however negatively you think of him, that is a fact. However badly you think of him as a person – he is not the only bad person to have power in government. Nor is he even the worst.

Just as we count on punishment as the inventive to prevent that small portion of people who will not otherwise obey the law, the same is true when those people are in government.

Above I asked what the “rules” were for law enforcement intruding into our lives.
It is their role to do so – but there are supposed to be rules and constraints.

What is the consequence for not following those rules ?

We must ask and answer the questions aboVE BEFORE we address the who.

The rule of law – means applying the same rules the same way all the time.
Doing so whether the alleged violator is friend or foe.
Lawlessness – the rule of man occurs when the force of government – including law enforcement is driven by WHO is the target, rather than the actual acts.

Michael McFaul who SUBSEQUENTLY became the US ambassador to Russia told the Washington Post that PRIOR to the 2008 election he met in moscow with the russian government officials.
The Obama campaign also reportedly met with Hamas terrorists, FARC terrorists and the Iranian regime during the 2008 election — but for some reason Deep State did not give it much notice.

We have myriads of ties between Russia and the Clinton campaign.

Yet, we are whigged out because:

Carter Page met once with Russian businessmen in Russia during 2016,
George Papadoulis was baited into beleiving he had indirect contact with Russians through a Professor in London who likely had no involvement with Russia,
and Trump Jr. hoping for something Salacious on Clinton met with Natalia and got an earful on Russian adoption.

This is the sum of the Trump campaign “crimes”.

Thus far we can not ever prove there was actual meaningful contact between Trump and Russia, much less collusion.

Yet, the Obama campaign has admitted to direct contact with Russia during the 2008 campaign while Russia was invading Georgia.

I would further note that both during the campaign and as president Obama was conciliatory towards Russia – looking for a major nuclear arms deal – shortly after the Russian invasion of Georgia.

Senator Obama understood that a Russia that was at that moment attacking Georgia, was neither a friend nor an enemy but a country that we would sometimes work with and sometimes oppose.

What has changed ?

Russia is only different in the eyes of the left – because an excuse needs made for Clinton’s loss to Trump.

There is a pattern here.

When things went south in Libya – Clinton queued an unknown coptic film maker who produced a video nearly no one has ever seen to blame for the disaster in Benghazi. When she loses an elections she thought was in the bag – it must be collusion with the Russians.

Trump Jr. may have tried to get dirt from Russia – but Clinton succeeded.

Despite the fact that refuting the Nunes memo – which the Schiff memo purports to do would require – if rumours about it are correct, exposure of even more “classified information”

The very people who were objecting to the Nunes memo as threatening to national security do not appear to feel the same about the Schiff memo.

What should be obvious is that “national security” and “classified” nearly always mean – embarrases someone in government. It has nothing at all to do with real threats to our security.

The Nunes memo has been released.
I beleive it is an accurate summary – but that is all it is, a SUMMARY.
I beleive it is true, and that it should be a huge deal.
But it really says nothing we did not already know.
Worse still while it should be a big deal, it is not. None on the left and all too few of the rest of us care that the Obama administration was inside of government doing exactly what Nixon TRIED and failed to do – spy on political opponents.

I have absolutely zero doubt that if we flipped this and had a republican president spying on a democratic campaign – that people would be in jail and bukldings would be burning.
But because a democrat did it to a republican it is ho-hum.

More appears to be coming out. Sen. Grassley has a memo that was ateast partly classified that DOJ/FBI are trying to prevent being made public. Nunes is working on a second memo addressing the State Departments role in this.

And now we are finding there was a second clinton funded Dossier in the hands of the FBI – one with an even worse provenance than the first, that numerous Clinton cronies were involved with.

Further Steele has testified in court that no attempt was ever made to verify the “intelligence” in the dossier, that it was never more than rumours collected by him from sources – mostly in Russia. So we have the FBI/DOJ going to the FISA Court offering material that could not get printed int he national enquirer that no one has even attempted to verify and swearing to the FISA court that this constitutes Probable cause.

Generally as rumours are confirmed or refuted the trend is STRONGLY away from Trump/Russia collusion and towards Russia/Clinton/FBI/DOJ collusion.

More of the “Grassley Memo” has been declassified. Unlike Nunes, Grassley has not spent the past year and a half being excoriated by the minority leader on the Senate Intelligence committee.

The Grassley memo confirms much of what is in the Nunes memo, but adds – with less fanfare several addition bits of information.

There was a second Dossier – produced completely politically by the Clinton campaign, heavily involving Clinton operatives such as Sidney Blumenthal. Steele was given this other Dosier and used it for the more salacious claims in his fossier. Increasingly it is evident that much of what is in the Steele Dossier is “made up” and was never vetted.

We now know that the media stories the FBI/DOJ cited as butressing the Steele Dossier in the FISA Warrant application were themselves sourced by the Steele Dossier and therefore can not add to its credibility. And we know that FBI/DOJ KNEW this, and that they fired Steele for his press contacts. BUT that does not stop them from using the Steele Dossier as a justification for FISA Warrant renewals two more times.

We have more texts from Strzok and Page. This add little new – but the amplify everything that has come out before.

While there are no more references to “secret societies” there are additional references to a loosely organized political effort within FBI/DOJ to thwart Trump.

There is the further revelation that PRes. Obama – Contra to assertions by Holder and testimony by Comey was involved in the Clinton and possibly Trump investigations.
If True – and this should be easily verifiable, this would make Comey’s Mar. 8 2017 testimony perjured.

The testimony of the FBI informant in the Uranium One corruption probe is now coming out and it is damning. It is explicitly stating that atleast 100M was being funneled directly to Clinton related organizations specifically to facilitate the approval of the Uranium One Deal.
It is also making clear that the web of companies that some even here have tried to prevent were independent and unrelated were all just shells that APCO wordlwide, Uranium One, Tenex, are all Rosatom, that bribery and corruption to get the U1 Deal through started as early as 2009. That DOJ/FBI were well aware of it and kept that information from congress.

Some on the left correctly note that discrediting the Steele Dossier and the DOJ/FBI’s use of it does not directly undercut the Mueller investigation.

But it STRONGLY does so indirectly.

It is well past time to demand an offer of proof from DOJ/FBI./Mueller that there EVER was any legitimate basis for any of this.

Have we wasted enormous energy almost two years and torn the country apart over an investigation that has never had any foundation ?

For those arguing for Bi-Partisan – House Democrats and Republicans and Senate Democrats and Republicans just came together in a show of Bi-Partisanship to pass a budget that will raise the deficits to $1T each of the next two years.

As Rand Paul noted Republicans are only Fiscal Conservatives when they do not control government.

I would specifically note that 16 Republicans in the Senate and 67 republicans in the house voted against this. In the Senate 36 Democrats voted for this budget. In the house 73 democrats voted for it.

As Sen. Flake noted – bi-partisanship seems to be easy when spending more money.

Dave, I think we are the ” last man standing” at this site. Trying tofind something where people debate instead of just degrading others who have differing opinions, but no such luck.

Concerning the budget deal, not enough are paying attention. Not enough people care. So let them suffer when the shit finally hits the fan. I am positioning myself so the impact is less when it happens.

Interest rates were around 4.3% that impacted government debt just before the economic collapse in 2008. Today they are around 3%. On 21 trillion debt, each basis point will add 20 billion to the deficit. So a return to ” normalized” historical rates, that will add another 260 billion in expenses, not counting the compounding effect since even the interest is not being paid for as it accrues.

But as long as people have their smart devices, they dont need smart brains. Something else can think for them. Problem is, that will be directed by those like McConnell/Shumer and not Senator Paul.

So long as ventral banks exist – they not the market sets the interest rate.
Central Banks deliberately keep interests rates high – they want about 1-2% inflation because it is much easier for them to manipulate the economy when interest rates are higher.

The low interest rates of the past decade have made the task of the CB’s harder

But the norm in an actual free market is low interest and MILD deflation.

Please do not misconstrue my argument as meaning that mitigating debt through inflation is GOOD. It is not.

But the fundimental problem is that when you buy something today using future production, you are burdening your own future.

That is not inherently wrong. Buying a house today that you will pay for over time is often a wise choices – because that home will deliver value over time.

Borrowing from the future to pay your rent is a stupid idea. Rent pays for something with only short term value.

Much of our current borrowing is for spending that only has current value.
That is a big problem – not because of interest rates, or inflation, but because subsequent payments for borrowing use future production to pay for things that are already gone.

Dave, you and I both know what type politician needs to be elected. Those more like Rand Paul, more Libertarian, that will stand their ground for fiscal conservatism, but also believe government plays a very small role in social actions as long as harm does not come as a result of those actions. Gay marriage, gay rights,etc and those are what keeps more ” conservatives” from being elected.

And when a more libertarian conservative does run, 40% of the eligible voters dont care, another 35% would vote for Nicolus Maduro if he was the democrats choice and a majority of the remaining 25% would vote for someone like Trump insread of someone like Paul.

So, like I said, let them experience the cesspool of economic adjustments due to the debt bomb exploding. They may wake up once they cant afford buying a new smartphone every year.

The already elected politicians that oppose increasing debt, oppose domestic surveilance, Oppose subsidizing everything that moves are the ones that are constantly refered to as the EXTREMISTS.

I am at odds with some members of the “freedom caucus” on a few social issues.
The “Tea Party” is not inherently libertarian. But it is fiscally conservative, and it is a proponent of small government.

I would further note that Washington has a way of warping everyone who comes in contact with it.
My own representatives had carreers of being one thing locally and ran on that reputation to get to washington, where they have slowly become something else.

One of the most fundimental problems is our misperception that government is an effective tool for many things. That inspires people to attempt to use government rather than solve problems on their own.

An economics text I am reading made an interesting observation regarding “scarcity”.

Nearly everything is scarce – there is less readily available then we need.
Markets solve problems of scarcity with price competition. Higher prices drive consumers to look for substitutes or alter what they want. They drive producers to make something less scare – to produce more.

Lets try a hypothetical – a catholic church and a protestant church both wish to build.
But there is not enough lumber for both to build as much as they want.
The price of the lumber will cause one or both to change the scale of what they are doing to what they can afford. the price may also cause the lumber industry to produce more lumber.

Regardless in the end producers, and consumers will compete on price and the problem of allocating scarcity will be solved.

If in contrast government resolves scarcity – then we have two churches competing with the legislature trying to persuade legislators that each has a better claim to the available lumber than the other.

Worse still though this is the worst possible arrangement, it is also very attractive. Each church is left with the impression that if they can lobby well enough they can get what they want.
Legislators are left with great power and the sense that they are solving large problems.
Everyone misses that they are solving problems badly problems that would solve themselves far better and more efficiently if government was not involved.

Scarcity inherently is resolved by competition. The only question is how do you want that competition to be resolved – by people fighting each other – often tearing each other down in congress or by price competition in the markets.

When democrats passed PPACA – placing more of healthcare under control of government, the result was various groups fighiting either for largess from government or for special treatment by government.

We ended up with our courts trying to decide whether Hobby Lobby or Little Sisters of the Poors religious values were more important than the those of some womens easier access to abortificants.

Worse still even when government arbitrates such disputes – each of us still pays for it. Shifting competition from price competition in the market to power competition in government does not change scarcity – if anything it makes it worse.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that Rick hasn’t abandoned the site. And I haven’t found another comparable site either. So many sites have gone to using Facebook for their comments section, and I don’t like that at all.

Absent Jay or Roby to disagree with pretty much everything, or to drop only 40 offensive Trump tweets a day there is little to say

While there is new news each day – and I think alot of it is pretty damning, none of it seems to be changing peoples minds.

We can all discuss what todays or tomorows text or other revalation means.
But no one is changing their minds – though Trump’s approval is near the high point of his presidency – and rising, and the talk of a Blue wave is dying fast.

Though just as when democrats looked like they were doing well – everyone should remember the election is 10 months away. Alot can change.

Dave “While there is new news each day – and I think alot of it is pretty damning, none of it seems to be changing peoples minds.”

How many times have you heard ” Say something enough and people will believe it is true”? Thats what has happened with social media and the 24 hour news cycle.

And then there are many like me. Tuned out until some final reports are issued with documented proof of one position or another. However the current investigation(S) end up, I wsnt someone severely penalized and controls put in place so whatever is found it can not happen again . And if it does, prison is a requirement.

Jay as an example wants a world where merely alleging malfeasance empowers government to tear apart the lives of those accused.

Actually that is not quite accurate – he wants that ONLY when the accused are those he subjectively determines are bad people.

It is very hard for politicians, the courts, law enforcement to grasp that the ends do not justify the means.

Personally I think it has ALWAYS been self-evident that there never was a basis for any investigation into the Trump Campaign.

That does not mean that everyone in the Trump campaign behave perfectly.
You can not justify violating peoples rights – tearing their lives apart by finding some misconduct.
That ends justifies the means approach drives all the problems we have at the moment.

I am seeing people who I once highly respected offering tin foil hat legal theories purportedly proving Trump is engaged in obstruction that if they were actually true would criminalize everything. We already have a severe problem that virtually everything is a crime. We do not wish to make that worse.

Worse still obstruction is a process crime. It is unfortunately NOT the state of our law, but still many of us grasp that your should not be convicted of interfering with government actions that are not justified to begin with. That innocent people often do stupid things under the stress of a false and sometimes malicious criminal investigation.

There is one aspect of this Trump/Russia garbage that has merit – and that is addressing Russian efforts to hack voting machines. While I am not entirely convinced these occurred, and even so the claim is that they were small and unsuccessful it is still an area that can be addressed.

The actual process of voting is sacred and must be protected, it is supra constitutional.

But the PResidents voting commission wa disbanded because god forbid we should look into the few areas of actual or potential voter fraud that are plausible.

I find it odd – the left does not beleive that the large registration fraud we know is real, and the ease with with in person voter fraud can be done, nor the disparity in many places between the number of registered voters and the number of votes cast is a cause for concern.

But the fear that “russians” might through persuasion and pro NRA adds effect voters free choices – that we must go to war over.

Ron, I think that your “tuned out” position, until there is documentation, is the most prudent one. I would say, however, that Senator Grassley’s unredacted memo (not totally unredacted, but mostly), does provide documentation, i.e. proof, for Devin Nunes’ memo, which alleges that the fake dossier was never verified by the FBI, yet was still used to get a FISA warrant to spy on Trump and all of his associates.

And the media response to this is….to not even mention the Grassley memo. If you don’t watch Fox, you would never know that significant information was declassified. All CNN does is cover the guy that was secretary to Gen. Kelly and was also dating Hope Hicks, but is now fired because his first 2 wives say that he beat them, despite the fact that they didn’t go to the police at the time that they were married to him.

I would be inclined to fire the guy too I suppose, but, guilty or not, it’s a scandal about a person, not a scandal about the government. This guy has no impact on my life, but the behavior of FBI can impact anyone’s life, and does affect millions.

So, why hours on the White House guy who may or may not be a beater, and 3 minutes on the FBI?

One of the problems with “the left” is that they justify the use of force based on what they “don’t like”.

I like Obama, I do not like Trump. But thus far Trump has been a far better president
“Far better” is NOT the same as perfect, or even good.
But Obama was an abysmal president. And as we are increasingly finding out his administration was morally bankrupt and corrupt.

One of our current fights is over immigration – Obama evben by the standards the left claims to adhere to was abysmal on immigration – Obama deported on average 400,000 people per year, that is more than twice what Bush did. In 2017 Trump deported 267,000 people – that is closer to Bush than Obama.
Yet, Obama is purportedly a hero with respect to immigration.

Even the fight over DACA is mostly posturing. During the Obama administration the largest single reason for deporting illegal immigrants was that they committed a crime – significantly more than half of all reportations were the consequence of crimes. The next largest reason was border crossings – because if you are caught while crossing the border it is relatively easy for ICE to deport you. Under Trump deportations are occuring for exactly the same reasons.

Yes, there are people deported for other reasons – more so under Obama than Trump.
But these are by far the exception not the norm.

This is also one of the reasons for the “lazy” comment of Kelley – though his reasoning is wrong.
More than half of those eligable for DACA never registered.
Why ? Maybe they were lazy. But more likely it was because they have no trust. Their experience is that if they can avoid contact with government they can remain forever. And that is pretty close to true. If we increased deportations by 100.000 Dreamers a year – it would take nearly 20 years to deport them all. It is just not happening. It was not happening before DACA, it was not happening during DACA, and it will not happen now.

Democrats are trying to virtue signal, and republicans are trying to leaverage the lefts virtue signally into some meaningful immigration law.

Dave “Grassley does not have an Adam Schiff shiving him at every move.”

Yes and as I said awhile back about the dems memo having too much confidential information included to be released, Schiff did just that. Trump sent the memo back because the attorneys said there were too many instances of operational secrets included that would do more harm than good.

however, few will hear that side of the story, they will only hear that Trump is playing politics and only wants the conservative side of the issue heard. I know little about what is in either, so from that standpoint I am neutral. Just heard Friday night the release was not granted.

I am sure that Schiff put things into it deliberately to make it hard to release.

But I do not honestly beleive any of the assertions of relevant national security grounds for witholding any of this.

I had a Top Secret Clearance at one time. Primarily that was to allow me to attend meetings at the pentagon, or pentagon city or to get on to military bases or ships – you can not enter the control center of an Aegis Cruiser without a security clearance.

Regardless, I was exposed to classified information – mostly of a technical nature, which is something that has a meaningful reason to be classified.
But even that classified information was nearly always stuff that was trivial to guess, and frequently readily available in non-classified publications.

With respect to the Trump/Russia collusion investigation there can only be a very few things that the public should be deprived of:

First. I do not think you can block the release of anything that has already been reported in the press, even if it would otherwise be classified,

AFTER that
Anything that would ACTUALLY interfere with ongoing investigations – and I can not think of anything there.

Anything that would reveal current under cover operations.

That really is about it.

We already “knew” everything in the Nunes memo, and almost everything in the Grassely letter.
All those documents did was give the impramatur of specific congressmen or committees to what was already common knowledge.

The Schiff, Nunes, and Grassely documents are nothing more than Schiff, Nunes and Grassley saying – this is what happened. I know it to be true – because I have reviewed government documents and interviewed witnesses under oath.

Alot is made that these are just Schiff, Nunes, and Grassely’s “oppinions” – and that is correct.
Just as an ‘oppinion” of a court or even the supreme court is NOT fact.

Judges (and juries and congress) decide, based on evidence and testimony they hear what the BELEIVE to be the facts. A finding by some part of the government does not change what really happened.

But we tend to beleive those “oppinionions” because those offering them are betting their reputation on them.

I want the Schiff memo released – because Adam Schiff has bet his reputation on it, and I want to take that bet. I want Schiff in the same boat as Grassley and Nunes.

Grassley reveals that there was a second Trump Dossier that is more obviously political and directly tied to the Clinton campaign, and that Dossier was actually a source for much of what is in the Steele Dossier – in other words that the many of the allegations in the Steele Dossier did NOT come from Russians, but from people actually in the Clinton campaign.

Arguments over precisely what McCabe said to the house are tangential – as:

Comey said the same thing under oath to the Senate and Finally because what they said is not so important as the legal standard.

Law enforcement is allowed to rely on the past credibility of FACT WITNESSES – informants.

IT is NOT allowed to rely on the past credibilty of “investigators”.

Steele is an investigator, not a witness. His dossier is a compilation of allegations.
Steele is not an actual source. He was never personally privy to any fo the facts of the allegations in his dossier.

As McCarthy notes., The FBI can not go to the FISA court and say
Director Comey beleives these rumours to be true and his integrity and reliability has been confirmed many many times.

What Directory Comey beleives to be true is irrelevant.
Warrants are granted based on the credibility of the people who observed the facts.
Not the credibility of those who investigated the allegations.

A major issue that is lost in the media and by many others is that this is NOT about the Clinton campaign.

The assorted mostly false dirt that they dug up on Trump may be scurrilous but it is not a crime.
Nor are the efforts of the Clinton Campaign or the DNC to peddle this to the FBI.

Nor are Trump’s efforts to get dirt on Clinton from Natalia.

What is criminally improper is law enforcement engaging in a snipe hunt and manipulating the courts to expand that using only political allegations as a basis.

What Jau and those on the left do not understand – except possibly when it is their ox being gored, is that government may not tear apart the life and privacy of anyone it pleases merely because someone else makes allegations against them.

The texts that reveal biases are not the problem either – they are merely the explanation for misconduct.

FBI/DOJ should not have sought a warrant based on what they had from the Steele Dossier.
The allegations in the Steele dossier are only sufficient for a warrant if credible, and their credibility rests on that of PRIMARY SOURCES.

The FBI/DOJ took shortcuts and the FISA court let them. I am less hard on the FISA court than McCarthy is – Agents and lawyers at DOJ/FBI swore to the credibility of the information in the warrant application. McCarthy notes that should those warrants have ever lead to anything there would be an incredibly good case to throw out any evidence as fruit of a poisonous tree.

But that is part of what is wrong with government as a whole and law enforcement in particular.

Losing a criminal prosecution is NOT the appropriate consequence when law enforcement violates peoples rights. If anything those instances merely enrage those – usually on the right who think we are coddling criminals. The consequence of misconduct on the part of law enforcement should not be the failure of a criminal prosecution. That does nothing to remedy the harm to those who are actually innocent, and nothing to prevent future malfeasance.

Misconduct by law enforcement should at the very least cost those involved their jobs, and in some instances should result in criminal prosecutions.

Anyone prepared to prosecute Flynn for minor misrepresentation regarding his communications with Kisylak should be willing to impose more serious consequences for someone who swore out a warrant based on unverified rumours – or worse still unverifed rumours of political origen.

Dave “Anyone prepared to prosecute Flynn for minor misrepresentation regarding his communications with Kisylak should be willing to impose more serious consequences for someone who swore out a warrant based on unverified rumors”

All depends on your political persuasion. Its fine to prosecute if your politics are opposite the accused. We see it in comments every day on social media, blogs and the media.

They just should take the Constitution and put it in Ripleys “Believe it or Not” museum as that is about all its good for anymore with our current governmental leaders.

The banner will read. “Can you believe this country actually believed in this crap years ago?”

Wonder what most people would say about this. I know my position and it is not what the government would want in the name of security. Once they are able to get a warrant on illegal activities, where does it stop? If a foreign leader uses a server owned by a company with an office in America, what stops the government from getting a warrant to snope on that leaders email if they are suspected of some activity our government does not like.

We are having a anal hemorrhage over alleged Russian election interference in social media and now that same government wants the rights to review foreign e-mails. Where the hell does it stop?

Although the Scalia/Gorsuch shift might change things – as Scalia was not strong on the 4th amendment and Gorsuch thus far seems near absolutist.

Personally I find much of this particular case perplexing.

Why does US law matter ? The4 emails are in Ireland. The US government does not have jurisdiction in Ireland. We can not make laws that apply in Ireland. We can not make laws that apply to US persons or US companies in Ireland.

The article says that a law was used to justify a warrant. That is a very perverse missunderstanding of the constitution.

The 4th amendment perscribes the requirements for a search or seizure.

We have far too many instances today where the courts have allowed laws that narrow constitutional rights. That is just nonsense. You can not change the constitution by writing a law.
If you do not like the 4th amendment – amend the constitution.

The courts need to put teeth back into the 4th amendment – though I do not see that happening.

Look at what just went on in DOJ/FBI regarding Trump.

There are alot of people going Ho Hum – why is this a big deal. The Carter Page FISA warrant is at the same time both unbeleivably egregious and a nothing burger.

It is unbeleivably egregious because it is hard to imagine anything that the 4th amendment was more strongly intended to prevent than one political party using the machinery of government against another.

It is ho hum because courts and district magistrates rubber stamp law enforcement warrant applications all of the time.

Although the 4th amendment was weak even by the 1960’s – we have subsequently obliterated it.

Prior to the war on drugs – “Knock and Announce” was an ABSOLUTE requirement – and in the UK, which does nto have a 4th amendment, it REMAINS a requirement.
The requirement for warrants and to “knock and announce” comes from 16th century common law. The courts felt that if the broke peoples doors in without identifying themselves that the owner might respond with justifiable violence.

We have also traditionally barred later night and early morning “raids” for much the same reason.
Though the legal principles again date back to the 16th century and again are based on castle doctrine – a persons home is their castle and they have a right to defend it, and law enforcement must come carefully into the castle to avoid the owner justifiably responding with force.
But more recently we have had the experience of the Nazi Gestapo and their “night and fog” raids that were DELIBERATELY intended to terrorize people into submission by targetting them at odd hours when they were least able to cope.

Our military does something similar – they call it “shock and awe” it is a very effective military technique.

This is what comes when we start defining the non-military efforts of government in military terms.
The war on Drugs, the war on poverty. the war on …

Describing something as a war allows us to tolerate even encourage the obliteration of rights.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the watchers ?

Ultimately none of this gets fixed until we are prepared to hold government and law enforcement accountable when individual rights are violated.

I am constantly noting that Micheal Flynn’s “crime” was a minor misrepresentation of his conversations with Kislyak to an FBI agent in an unscheduled and unprepared interview.

The representations made to the FISA Court in the Page warrant applications were sworn statements – under oath, and they were misrepresentations of atleast equal magnitude.

IF Flynn is guilty of a crime – then every agent and DOJ lawyer who signed off on the Cater Page warrant is too.

Regaredless if you do not hold those asking and enforcing warrants accountable for them, then whatever rules you have will become entirely meaningless.

Many say we should not want the police worrying that they could get in trouble for “just doing their job”.

But that is EXACTLY what we want. Unless there are consequences for violating our rights, whatever the courts say the 4th amendment is meaningless.

Dave “Why does US law matter ? The4 emails are in Ireland. The US government does not have jurisdiction in Ireland. ”

It Is my understanding that the issue SCOTUS is ruling on is if there are emails stored anywhere in the world by a company with a presence in the USA, then a ruling against Microsoft would then require companies to provide messages if a warrant is issued.

So if person A in Britian communicates with person B in France and they are using a companies system that is located in Canada and that company has a presence in America then a ruling would require that company to provide emails stored on their servers if a warrant was issued.

As Ben Franklin said, ” people are born ignorant, but it takes hard work to be remain stupid” And that is what we have with people not paying attention to what is happening.

The US government does not have the ability to grant itself jurisdiction in other countries.

While we have SOME treaties were countries agree to recognize each others extradition claims.
That is by agreement between the countries.

I do not know what if anything Ireland is doing in this instance, but Ireland is perfectly free to tell Microsoft that it may not turn over emails stored in Ireland to the US government.

A few decades ago cases like this would never occur – the US had better respect for the sovereignity of other nations and was not as adept at bullying them.

About a decade ago The US government finally manage to get the Swiss to cave on their bank privacy laws, which for hundreds of years were pretty much absolute.
Today though it is complicated the US government can get a US warrant honored by a Swiss court for the records of a Swiss Bank, based on claims and crimes and whatever that only occur in the US.

But we have gone beyond that – now in many instances the US just says FU to foreign sovereignity. That is what appears to be occuring here.

This is all actually a BAD thing – evben when it does nto involve foreign governments.
The more broad the US government extends its powers to interfere in otherwise private conduct, the big the “black market” grows.

One solution to the “microsoft problem” is encrypted email.

I do not recall all of the details, but Eric Snowden used an email system that encrypted emails and promised absolute security. The federal government sought a warrant and got the court to order not just that thary company provide access to snowdens emails, but that they turn over the SSL key for the company – that would allow the government to read the emails of ALL of their clients.
The company fought the warrant as overly broad for months. They had a serious problem – because they were actually legally barred from even telling the world that a warrant had been issued that would allow the government access to ALL of their clients emails.
Ultimately the solved the problem by shuttering the business.
The SSL key – which they did eventually have to turn over, did NOT give the government access to stored emails – those were encrypted using a public private key system that was out of the control of the company. but emails traveling over the internet to servers were encrypted using SSL certificates – much like your purchases on Amazon or ebay. If you have the SSL key you can decrpyt all traffic in real time – but ONLY in real time.

The head of the company shifted to working on a P2P cloud based secure email system where there is no one that government can get a warrant against.

Apple went through a version of this nonsense with the iPhones.
The FBI tried to issue a warrant to compell Apple to make custom iphone software that would allow the FBI access to any iPhone. This was a response to the San Bernadino shootings.
Apple politily said FU to the government.

Ultimately Apple prevailed – primarily because there are enough people that know full well that the FBI had the ability to access the San Bernadino shooters phone.
All the FBI was after was getting from a process that is difficult and time consuming and expencise that gets them the information on a single phone, to a general solution that would give them access to any phone.

If the FBI wishes to contract with me – I will be perfectly happy to crack any phone they want – for $1M/phone.

There is absolutely no such thing as uncrackable security. There is only incredibly difficult to crack security.

If you have enough money GSM cellphones can be cracked in real time.

Things are also changing as a consequence of corporate espionage.
Cellphone and email cracking and hacking is becoming profitable for corporations targeting competitors, stock traders, ….

Say you are a hedge fund – would you spend 100K to setup in the same hotel as Apple execs are just before a shareholders meeting and listen in on all their calls, texts and emails to each other ?
Merely knowing a few hours ahead of time what the company is going to tell shareholders could allow making enormous profits.

The risk to large and medium corporations is so great today they are demanding incredibly secure phones for top executives. This is also part of why Apple did not capitulate.

Somebody is going to sell uncrackable phones. If the government prevents Apple from doing so – it will be someone else.

There are perfectly good legitimate reasons for strong encryption that matter to people and companies that have nothing to do with “darknets”.

We are debating crypto currencies right now.

The US losses do to credit card hacking are estimated at 35B/year today.
Fundimentally that is because our electronic transaction infrastructure is not sufficiently secure.

Crypto currencies absolutely solve that problem as well as a number of other valueable problems.

Yes, at the moment the majority of crypto exchanges have to do with darkents, drugs, and prostitution. But that could change suddenly – because there is 35B in credit card fraud that could be eliminated. That ignore the tremdous reduction in the need for credit – I beleive it is eatimated that $2T/day is tied up in credit associated just with non-cash purchases world wide.

But governments – particularly the US are not happy with Crypto currencies.

Again NOTHING is uncrackable. But a shift to crypto currencies would preclude the easy access the us government has to financial exchange information worldwide.

It would still be possible to trace drug and terrorist funds xfers – but it would be sufficiently expensive that the cost would impose essentially the equivalent of a warrant requirement on the process.

If tracing transfers is so expensive that you can only trace 1% then you have to think carefully about what/who you trace.

Further there are techniquest using crypto’s to increase the difficulty tracing and exchange by orders of magnitude.

We are rapidly approaching a point at which increasingly broad adoption of existing encryption technology will return government to its 19th century capacity for spying on people.

This is inevitable. How fast it procedes will depend on how quickly ordinary people adopt ever better cyrpto But slow or fast it is happening.

Further the US actually risks being on the lagging end of major shifts as a consequence of this.

China and some other developing nations already have better electronic payments systems than the US – they have entirely skipped credit cards – just as they pretty much skipped land line phones.

One of the advantages of being several generations behind is that when you move forward you can jump straight to the front of the line.

Anyway my real point is this is a stupid case.

The government may or may not get what it wants from Microsoft,
but even winning will only increase the incentive to shift to ever more secure email.

I will also note that moving to public/private key emailsnot only makes government snooping harder – but it also provides the means to solve the SPAM problem.

cyrptography not only provides the means to prevent people from snooping on your email, but also the means for recipients to validate that an email is from who it claims to be from.

All that is missing today is easy to use implimentations – and that is not an insurmountable obstacle.

Dave, you must have info I dont know. “The US government does not have the ability to grant itself jurisdiction in other countries”

The case before SCOTUS is one of the US government forcing Microsoft to provide emails stored in an Irish data center. According to techies, Microsoft has “cloud” storage world wide and they store information for individuals that do not want to keep it locally. They identify where the users address is and move data closest to the users location.

The US government can do any damn thing they want to do. If SCOTUS upholds the governments position that Microsoft has to provide info from an Irish datacenter, how does Microsoft not do that? Ireland can do whatever they want, but when the feds walk in and serve Microsoft a warrant in Seattle for data in Dublin, SCOTUS has already ruled and Microsofts only alternative is to break the law and be cited for contempt of court.

This has not been addressed in this case – but Ireland is perfectly capable of saying to Microsoft, you may NOT provide this to the US government, that they must go through Irish law enforcement.

At the moment of the warrant the data was stored in Ireland – that is all that matters.

While Orin Kerr has been looking at this and thinks that the argument both MS and DOJ are making is wrong, this is NOT an SCA case – the Law that DOJ is trying to use, but an AWA case – i.e. a basic case about warrants in general and their jurisdiction. A critical fact is that the US government does not have world wide jurisdiction.

We often get our way by bullying and dwarfing everyone else. what we can often force, does not change what we have the right to do.

The US does not have jurisdiction over Ireland.
They do not have jurisdiction over Microsoft in Ireland.

They can compel MS US to do whatever they please – or atleast what they can persuade a court to compel, but they can not impose constraints on things outside of the US except through treaties with other countries – and even those are voluntary cooperation.

As to your scenario:

You have presumed SCOTUS is going to give DOJ permission.
Most legal analysis I am reading suggests that is unlikely.

But if they do microsoft does nto have a choice between violating US law or not.
They have a choice of WHICH countires laws or sovereignty they violate.

They are going to run affoul of the law one way or another.

The jusrisdiction over people and things in Ireland belongs to Ireland. Not the US.

I expect that SCOTUS’s answer is likely to direct DOJ to work with the Irish.

Regardless, neither SCOTUS, nor DOJ have jurisdiction in Ireland.

Should SCOTUS give DOJ what they want and they march into Seattle and serve the warrant,
Microsoft Seattle can say – sure we will fully cooperate, and Microsoft in Ireland can say FU.
And there will still be Nothing DOJ can do about it.

I am not sure they will do that – it will depend on how this is playing in Ireland.

There are actually broader issues here – which is one of the reasons it is good that the Tax Reform backed the US away from taxing the foreign profits of US corporations – which was always a bad idea.

But there is a different more critical aspect to this.

In the US we often argue and treat the states as laboratories of democracy.

We benefit as a people from competition between states.
Another good part of the Tax Reform’s eliminiation fo the deductibility of state taxes, is that it compells states to compete – which is something we want.

This should have been a no brainer. People are not going to flee CA for montana because CA taxes are so high. They MAY flee a high tax state if the value delivered by the state government is not commensurate with the taxes. And that is what we want. We want states competing – just like we want market competition. We want different ideas tried, we want differetn states to target different values, and then see how things work out.

We want the SAME THING with nations. So called “tax havens” are a force that compells other nations to seriously consider their rates of taxation.
A major factor in the recent tax reform was that the US had the highest corporate taxes in the developed world – and it was costing us economically.

These same competivie issues are true even in the context of things like warrants.

The relations between nations are a multi-millenia long working example of anarcho-capitalism.

We do not want one nation to be able to dictate to all.
We want some countries to be able to say “FU” to the rest and see what the results are.

If in the instant example the Irish actually say to MS Ireland – do not give DOJ those emails,
Ireland will have set itself up and an “data haven”. Absolutely it will attract criminals. But it will also attract myriads of organizations and services that are just not comfortable with Government review of their communications.

If the Irish said to DOJ FU, that would make me and many many others seriously look at email providers hosted in Ireland.

That is how free market competition works. Somebody provides what people want.

But this only works when it is not possible for government to preclude people from delivering a service others want. If you decide that US jurisdiction is global – you preclude this type of thing.

BTW ruling against MS is stipid and short sighted – even if DOJ wins, even if MS Ireland turns over the emails,. All that means is someone will start up a mail provided outside the US, with a completely non-US company, in a nation that is fully prepared to say FU to the US.

One of the big advantages of the globalized world is that more and more nations compete – they compete econoically, they compete on laws and freedom.

And ultimately competition always favors freedom.

Lastly, if the US has control over data and people in Ireland – than what does it not control world wide ?

If we are allowed to impose our will by force on foreign people, or foreign property, then are we not equally obligated to protect foreign people and foreign property ?

The claim that the US has juridiction globally – also creats positive obligations of the US worldwide. Suddenly we are obligated to protect the rights of citizens in other nations – possibly from their own government.

Try thinking about this another way What if France served a Warrant on MS in paris demanding access to MS email data stored in Seattle ?

Do you think americans would be happy about that. ? Do you think we would not be outraged – and justifiably so.

National Security has been used to justify secrecy, as well as to justify all manners of actions by government infringing on our liberty.

Our purported safety is used as a justification for all kinds of expansion of the power of government.

Yet, historically the public exposure of classified documents has never had the consequences that we were told we had to fear.

The release of the pentagon papers MIGHT have helped turn public oppinion on the vietnam war.
That would be a real consequence – but are you saying that government can hide the truth from the american people because if we knew what our government was doing we would not support it ? That some government document might errode the public support of government is a reason it MUST be made public, not a reason it should be secret.

From WWII through the present it appears that the CIA and FBI have NEVER been free of highly placed russian moles. even Al qeda apparently managed to infiltrate the FBI in the past couple of decades.

Put simply our government secrecy makes it certain that the american people are clueless regarding our governments actions – but our enemies know everything they need to know.

Over my lifetime many many purportedly secret documents have been made public.

I can not think of a single one that I could look at an say – oh that contains information that our enemies should not know.

The Nunes memo has been made public.

Whether you like what it says or not – can you explain to me why ANYTHING in it should ever have been “classified” ?

I do not expect anything from the Schiff memo but partisan posturing. Regardless, it should be made public.
As should all the testimony to the house and senate intelligence committees, as well as all the documents that the FBI/DOJ have been holding back.

Even the Clinton email scandal – I really wish Wikileaks had actually gotten and published the Clinton Sec State emails. While I do think that Clinton should be held accountable for mishandling them. At the same time I expect that NONE of them would be damaging to national security.

EVen the most classified top secret code wode information about drone targetting only needed to be secret for a very short period of time.

In July 2017 Hemingway is getting accused of being a wild conspiracy theorist for suggesting that the Steele Dossier was used to get the FISA warrants and that the DNC may have paid for it.

Harf a Obama Administration Press secretary says that is absolutely not true. She was there, the Steele Dossier was something salacious and funny, but it was not taken seriously by anyone in the administration and the claim that it was is just republicans trying to deflect attention from the Russia investigation.

I and I think most libertarians and some conservatives are capable of understanding that when you find that people have lied to you about something important – it is very difficult to trust them in the future.

I fully agree with Rand Paul – Republicans are only fiscal conservatives when they do not control government. the current “bipartisan” budget deal STINKS.

It is near impossible to trust those that voted for this deal when they make claims about needing to cut spending in the future.

Are we – particularly those on the left prepared to hold their own to the same standards.

6 short months ago asserting the Steele Dossier was used to get a FISA Warrant or was paid for by democrats was tin foil hat conspiracy nuts – according to democrats.

Well the nuts have proven absolutely correct.

So why should I beleive that what the left is currently calling tin foil hat conspiracy theories is not also true ??

Dave, if you cant convince them with facts, then baffle them with bull $#\). How is anyone other than someone who spends hours analyzing the news going to understand the overload of info coming from both sides.

The media today is not going to check facts, verify facts, report facts and make them in a manner someone other than a legal expert or political junkie is going to understand. Confuse and conquer gets your candidate elected.

Apparently the CIA, Brennan and Clapper are next on Nunes’s list – after finishing the State Department.

While I expect the left to be yammering about distraction or something,
Prof. Tribe is already calling Nunes probes obstruction of justice.

I should think the left should welcome this.

Brennan was actively pushing for an FBI investigation into Trump/Russia Collusion starting in June 2016.

Brennan has repeatedly claimed that the CIA had evidence of significant Russian interferance as well as contact between the Trump campaign and Russia. Clapper made similar claims from NSA
though Brennan remained the most vociferous.

Brennan has testified publicly that the Steele Dossier was NOT a source for the CIA.

So this should be simple – CIA/NSA produce for HPSCI the evidence that Brennan has repeatedly publicly claimed existed. or Brannan may face perjury charges.

Brennan was publicly and privately making claims that perfectly mirror those int he Steele Dossier before the FBI had the Steele Dossier and before it was made public or shopped to journalists.

Either Brennan had independent sources that matched those of the Steele Dossier or Brennan has lied under oath.

IF the former – that would create a foundation for the FBI investigation other than the Steele Dossier – which leaves the question why didn’t the FBI use that CIA sourced information in the FISA Warrant applications, as anything from CIA would have been far more credible than the Steele Dossier.

CIA scrutiny is also important with respect to any inquiry into the veracity of the Steele Dossier.
Confirming or falsifying the assertions of the allegations of the Steele Dossier is in the domain of the CIA – not the FBI. So what did the CIA do and what were the results ?

The left has claimed there was more to Trump Russia Collusion – so lets find out.

As of yet the only alternative sources to any of this, has been either other work of Fusion GPS or other DNC opperatives or Clinton surogates.

At this time there is no evidence that any allegations of Trump/Russia collusion came from non-pollitical sources, or that any of these allegations regardless of source were investigated and verified.

An excellent article covering much of what is known about Brennan’s involvement in all of this.

I was reminded that Brennan was involved in the political spying on US Senators – including democrats even before the 2026 election.

I would also noted the ries to the British may prove significant.
Cooperation between intelligence agencies is usually a good thing.
But intelligence agencies arround the world often use friendly agencies from other countries to do what they are legally prohibitted from doing themselves.
Typically german intelligence must meet a high standard to spy on germans, British intelligence to spy on the british. and so on. But each are free to spy on citizens of other countries – including citizens of friendly countries that the friendly countries intelligence agency is barred from spying on.

There is a manditory FBI/DOJ process that all FISA court warrant applications are required to go through, that requires EVERY SINGLE ASSERTION in the warrant application to be verified – and not just at one stage by one person, but by there separate layers in the FBI and one in the DOJ and then by an independent FBI panel specific to FISA warrants.

In otherwords a FISA warrant is required to be more than probably true. Everything presented to the court – each individual claim must be certified repeatedly as true or it can not be included in the application.

And the Icing on this ? The last revision of this process was done by then FBI Director Mueller in 2003 and was done as a result of prior FISA warrant application abuses.

Expounding on this a bit further one should remember with respect to EVERYTHING the federal government does. There are ALWAYS well defined procedures and protocols.

Whether it is republicans or democrats arguing that something that was done seems reasonable – or unreasonable, and asking the people to make a judgement based on the “reasonableness”.

This is very nearly always a distraction – laws, rules policies and procedures already exist.

If they were followed – and abuses still occured, we revise the laws, rules. policies and procedures, we can not hold people in government accountable if they followed the rules.

BUT conversely – if they did not, they should at the very least lose their jobs, and depending on circumstances be prosecuted.

It is irrelevant whether political pundits, talking heads, the media, or whoever thinks that their conduct is reasonable – or unreasonable.
What matters is did it conform to applicable law, rules, polices and procedure.

This is what the rule of law means.

It means that we do not decide these types of questions based on our own subjective feelings about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

We do so based on the law, rules, policies and procedures.

If we “feel” that outcome is wrong – we change the law, rules polices and procedures.

The rule of LAW not man – does nto mean the law is sacred, or immutable. It merely means that the meaning of the law can not change EXCEPT when the legislation consciously changes it.

That when we have defined something as either acceptable or unacceptable we are bound to apply that determination consistently too all OR change the law.

Dave, since we are the only ones here, your comment “It means that we do not decide these types of questions based on our own subjective feelings about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”

Who are you trying to pull the wool over their eyes? Comey, the number 1 dude in the FBI did just that with Clinton using her private server. He wanted her president, felt she was the good guy and disliked Trump, so he subjectively wrote his report to exclude her from any prosecution.

I understand what you are saying, but we have a conflict between “real” and “work”.

In the real world it is very difficult to get people to constrain their decisions making on matters that involve using force against others – i.e. government, to discount feelings.

But that is the only way that “works”. Anything else throws sand in the gears and results in poor and inefficient choices – in other words it leaves us overall with a lower standard of living that we would have had otherwise.

I would further note that just about every field of human knowledge has until recently striven to reach decisions based on facts, logic and reason – not feelings.

Whether it is philosophy or law biology or economics – that is the them of history.

I qualified with “until recently” because post-modernism rejects not merely the objective, but even the concept that we can use facts logic and reason to probabilisticly and some what subjectively reach a broadly accepted subjective standard of truth.

The entire political correct, safe space, micro-aggression, intersectional garbage that is being sold on campuses today, converts feelings into truths – which is divisive and dangerous.

This is also why Trump’s MAGA message resonates, and what is wrong with #resistance.

This is a major part of the partisan divide in this country right now.

We have one group that is constantly dwelling on our failings – both real and immagined,
telling us that coin tosses are rascist – everything anyone whit does today is racist, and much of what those who are not intersectional lottery winners do.
That same group cellebrates our enemies – North Korea, Iran,
That same group finds the oppression of others – women, jews, christians, gays acceptable – if it is done by some otherwise disfavored group – like muslims.

In contrast we have a group that knows this country is not perfect, but also knows it is the best there is. Not in every possible way – but overall. That also strives to make this country and its people better – and freer. That is tired of being called racisit, hateful hating haters, merely for wondering if we can accomodate 700m potential immigrants.

I find it beyond tragic that this unbelievable scandal is unfolding before our eyes, and millions of Americans would rather ignore it, because it doesn’t fit the narrative that they have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker. That narrative being that Obama was the coolest and greatest prez ever, that everyone was happy under his benevolent dictatorsh….uh, presidency, and that the world finally loved us because we had elected him emper….uh, president. And then this awful, orange idiot got elected, and tried to make Congress do its job, and he eats McDonald’s, and tells the truth about the media being a bunch of dishonest hacks, and, oh my god, he’s ruined everything!

No, despite the possibility that the biggest government scandal in American history may be playing out in our lifetimes, they would rather tut-tut over the fact that General Kelly should have fired a WH staff secretary faster than he did, or over allegations that Trump slept with a stripper, or that Mike Pence failed to stand and respect the North Korean Olympic team.

I am trying to look into my own crystal ball to see where I think things go from here.

So My reading of the tea leaves.

Trump/Russia collusion is dead – that does not mean Mueller will go away, and it does not mean he won’t get a few more scalps before he leaves.

I do not think Mueller will get to interview Trump under oath.
I do not think Trump’s lawyers will allow it,
and I do not think Mueller has sufficient basis for it.
He will end up submitting written questions.

I think we will see more and more evidence of political corruption in the Obama Administration as this continues. I am increasingly surprised at how things seem to be so interconnected.
When the Steele Dossier loops arround and sucks in Clinton operatives like Sidney Blumenthal, it is much harder to pretend this was all a bunch of people who loved Clinton and hated Trump and each on their own made biased decisions that resulted in consequences identical to those of a conspiracy. I am not sure that we will ever have “proof” of a conspiracy. But we already have more than enough to support the beleif that there was one. It is alteast a reaonable possibility.
In fact it is close to a certainty and the only question is how large.

But regardless of the building evidence – people will not care. The continued House and Senate investigations will increasingly be ignored by the left and the media.

Despite the fact that people will not broadly realize that something truly far worse than watergate happened, the pendulum of public oppinion is swinging away from democrats.

I think it is increasingly unlikely that Republicans will lose the house or the senate – atleast not in 2018. If the economy remains strong, if the stock market “adjustment” is just that, there is a good possibility that Republicans will gain in both the house and the Senate.

Despite the left’s claims of Gerrymandering – which just doesn’t work the way the left argues it,
republicans are underrepresented in the federal government.

There are only a very few truly blue states. There are a slightly larger number of purple states and the majority of states are red or pink.

Republicans have a “trifecta” – complete legislative control of 26 states.
Democrats have a Trifecta in 7.

That should mean 14 guaranteed Democratic senators, and 52 guaranteed republican ones.
with the remaining 34 likely spliting something like 20/14 for republicans.

The house of representatives allocates on congressional districts independent of states.

But democrats so heavily self select to live in cities – the result being most democrats have over 70% voter support in their districts – but that also means there are very few democrats left to elect representatives outside of cities. If you look at the number of democratic voters in major cities in the US – there are just not enough democrats left to win a significant portion of other congressional districts. This is the reason the left is making this stupid voter efficiency argument with the courts.

What hopefully the courts will grasp is THERE IS NOT an objectively neutral way to setup congressional districts. The ‘voter efficiency” metiric is just a different means of gerrymandering – one that favors democrats and will result in the same geographically hideous congresional districts.

Further there is a very good argument that we should stick to geography – attemping to make districts reasonably compact and otherwise to look to group people with similar interests together.

Is there a reason that people living in rurla areas should not have a representative that favors rural interests ? Just as those living in cities should have a representative favoring urban interests.

Anyway. I digress. I think we are near complete the “great sorting” – In my lifetime republicans mostly controlled the north east and many cities, while democrats controlled the south.
Over several decades that has flipped – but we are still completing the shift in representation that entails – and completing that favors republicans.

It is my view that we may be coming close to political stability – in terms of which party controls which states and districts with fewer and fewer swing districts.

This will be effected by immigration and by the differences in birth rates between minorities and the rest of us. BUT it will also be effected by the fact that there is a generational shift towards conservatism – the italians, and irish used to be reliable democratic voters. They are not anymore.
The more a group rises from the bottom towards the middle the more republican they become – irrespective of race, and that happens – for every race over enough generations.
Further whatever the politics of young people – they become more conservative as they grow up, get a job, get married have kids, and move out of cities. That trend is not changing.

So my prediction is that republicans accomplish very little between now and Nov. They hold the house and senate – possibly with small pickups – thought the economy can move that one way or the other.

The left and media continue to rant – but increasingly less are paying attention.
Nunes and company continue to soldier on – and no one is paying attention.

What I care about – is that regardless of which party takes control of congress – it will be close no matter what, that ACTUAL fiscal conservatives and libertarian republicans increase their numbers withing the GOP. That is what matters.

Ryan and McConnell were only able to pass this spendthrift budget with MASSIVE democratic support. That possibility is not changing. But it will only take very small increasing in fiscal conservatives and libertarian republicans to preclude leaders in the house and senate from violating the “hassert rule” – you do not bring legislation to the floor without the support of the majority of the majority.

I think the attack on Pence at the olympics and the fawning of the media over North Korea is incredibly stupid.

Absolutely the vast majority of americans are glad that the North Koreans are at the olympics.
Anything that reduces the odds of war.

But or happiness that we have seen this SMALL step, is not some reason to pretend that North Korea is a workers paradise or that an assortment of North Korean politicians are to be celebrated celebrities.

I am not a big Pence fan – but he is setting just about the right tone – we are glad you are here. We will try to find a way to sit down and work with you. So long as you can figure out how to not threaten your neighbors – we will not threaten you. But no one is pretending you are the “good guys”. I find the fawning over Soon Yong Un who as I understand is pretty downright brutal, to be repulisive. She is not a role model for anyone.

But this is part of the nonsense the left brings us.

Donald Trump is far from perfect. But with all his flaws he is a more decent person that any leader from the mideast, and most leaders throughout the world.

Even if as the left asserts he is one of the worst US presidents – that would STILL make him better than 90% of world leaders today. The north koreans are among the worst – but they are not near alone in that.

But then the left which claims to be for the rights of gay, trans, and women fawns all over muslims – and some pretty terrible ones at that.

I personally beleive we should to the greatest extent possible leave the despots of the world alone to screw over their own people – until their people take care of them.
But thinking it is stupid to go toe to toe with tin pot tyrants does not make them into good people or even make our worst leaders inferior to the best of them.

There are few if any US politicians of any persuasion I would not take over any from North Korea.
Richard Spensor and David Duke are less vile than Kim Un.

Despite the stupid fawning of the left and the press – I think the majority of americans understand this.

As I started – we are glad the North Koreans are at the olympics – it is unlikely they are going to nuke anyone while they are.

We are still talking about a regime that we may not be able to avoid going to war with in the near future – no matter how hard we try. A war that will likely kill a minimum of several hundred thousand people – in just a few hours – even if the war ends in days.
More likely it would be months, and millions of dead.

The outcome will be the same regardless, but there will still be lots of dead people.

The porn star thing has died – except in the eyes of the extreme left.

If Kelley quits it is because he is fed up with this garbage.
But beyond pissing him off, this does not effect him. There is no specific number of days or hours that someone accused of misconduct must be fired in.

Personally, I think there is a better approach – both in government and privately.

Put people who are subject to allegations with sufficient credibility on unpaid leave, and take them back if they get themselves acquitted.

“Only in America are legal citizens labeled “racists” and “Nazis,” but illegal aliens are called “Dreamers.”

Maybe we should call bank robbers “Dreamers.” After all, they are dreaming of getting rich.

I had a brief discussion of DACA over the weekend, with a liberal friend of mine. I said that I thought that those who had been brought here as children should be allowed to stay…he nodded approvingly. Then I said that I thought that their parents should be deported, and made to apply for entry, if they want to return. He was clearly disappointed and angered by that one. He said that the “families should be allowed to stay together.” First of all, many, if not most of these “kids” are in their 20’s and 30’s. They don’t need their parents to stay and take care of them. And, if they do, they can leave the US voluntarily and go back to their parents’ country. That would keep the family together.

I remember a story of a valedictorian who wanted to give her graduation speech in both English and Spanish, since her parents did not speak English. The school agreed, but told her that she would still have to abide by the time limit for the speech, which was 5 minutes. In other words, if she was going to give the speech twice, she’d have to cut it to 2.5 minutes.

She agreed and then gave a 20 minute speech (10 minutes in each language). Many of her classmates turned their backs to her, after 5 minutes, angered that she broke her bargain. She later called them racists in an interview with the local paper (the other students were all black or Latino ~ there were no white kids in the school).

I often think of this incident, which happened about 15 years ago, but seems to exemplify the moving goalposts of the DACA issue.

The “Dreamers” are the perfect example of how emotion distorts government.

There are few of us who have no sympathy for them.

but objectively there is no difference between a “dreamer” and anyone else seeking to come to the US. If anything among those who would wish to come to the US the “dreamers” are lottery winners.

Which is part of the point. being american is an act of nature and random chance.
It bestowes incredible benefits on those of us who are, but it is not something anyone earned. Nor is there some basis beyond chance that give us a right to it.

Yet we still MUST make choices about who gets to be american and who does not.

We can make those choices based on the stronger emotional appeal of a few hundred thousand who have through the choices of others been here for a decade or so, or we can look towards the best interests of the country. Those may even overlap.

But the mere fact of arriving in the US through no fault of your own, does not create a right or an obligation of others, nor does it make you more or less deserving that someone from Norway, or Haiti, or Nigeria.

Ultimately we must make choices.

In another post I noted that where choices are made outside of government, scarcity is resolved by the market. Whatever criticism you may have of that choices become about individual rather than group preferences. Each of us decides from what we can afford what we want most. We do not each chose the same. While we compete with others, we do so with some distance from direct conflict.

When we make choices through government – we get what we see with DACA and dreamers.
We get emotional appeals and direct conflict on the basis of emotions.
We get groups competing to persuade government to favor them. No matter what the results there will not only be winners and losers – but they will be selected based on the emotional appeal of some tribal identity.

When government makes choices for us – they become choices between black and white, rich and poor, healthy and sick, christian and jew, men and women. urban and rural. Each of these are GROUP choices. We force government to make emotional choices based on group identity.
Thuse avoiding individuals making choices based on their own wants and needs and their individual capacity to attain those individual wants and needs.

I have no animus towards dreamers. I merely grasp that their emotional appeal is nothing more than a combination of group identity and proximity.
There is no objective basis for picking a dreamer over a Haitian or Nigerian or Norwegian rooted solely in the group identity of dreamers.

The rule of law is often arbitrary and caprecious.
Which is why the scope of law should be limited to the justifiable use of force.

Regardless, we correct issues of arbitraryness and capreciousness by changing the rule.

I do not care how long valedictorian speak. If 5min is not sufficient – change the rule.
But violating the rule does not make those ho are angry racists.

Frankly, anyone who can not make a better argument than calling their opponents racist, does not merit being valedictorian.

There is no difference between calling your opponents racist and calling your opponents by racial epitaphs. There is no difference between calling someone a racist and calling them a kike or a pollock. Both are substititution fo emotionally charged derogatory terms for argument.
Both are attempts to diminish your opponent persoanlly rather than diminishing their argument.

Priscilla, we have three types of people and each react totally different to the 24/7 media attempts to overload us with propaganda daily.
1, the largest group, somewhere +45%, are not following, have not followed and only know there is a Russian investigation and Trump is involved.
2. those that were interested, but since this is approaching a year since Comey was removed, they hace checked out and just hear something about it when watching something else. Like me, they want to know the final outcome, but are not following the left or right propaganda since they stringly believe there is truth somewhere, but know some of this is news just to make the liberal or conservative position look better.
3, information junkies on both sides, willing to absorb most of the daily output and believe most of whatever swings in their political persuasion.

And then there may be a few that dont fall in any of these. But given people I come in contact with a if this comes up much of their response is ” I am sick of the whole thing and just want it over with”

Neither the facts nor the actual legal issues are not supposed to be determined by press or popular oppinion.

A major part of the issue – the debate over the DOJ/FBI handling of all of this, is that government is supposed to act according to the law. If there is credibly evidence Clinton broke the law –
she should be investigated, whether republicans are in power or democrats.

IF Clinton broke the law – she should be prosecuted – again regardles sof who is in power.

Nor should popular oppinion matter – whether vigorously held or not.

We do not decide criminal guilt or innocence or its punishment in the court of public oppinion.

I do not care much that Strzok, etc. held strong political preferences. I do not care how they vote.
Public servants like all of us are free to their own political preferences.
But those preference CAN NOT influence how they do their job.

If you want a job where you are free to act on your own political prefernces – be your own boss in the private sector.

If you are a public servant you check your personal prefences at the door when you start work each day.

If you loath Trump and wish to be part of the #resistance – outside your role as public servant you are free to do as you please. In your role as public servant you are obligated to follow the law and follow the direction of elected leaders.

Trump is entitled to the loyalty of employees of the executive branch – meaning if they can not do what they are asked – they will resign.

“We do not decide criminal guilt or innocence or its punishment in the court of public oppinion.”

I”m not sure that is true when one looks at some of the comments posted here in earlier discussions, in the news coverage of current events, some results of criminal cases and some punishment handed out by the courts in those cases.

And you can take this one step further. Apply this thinking to Chief Justice Roberts decision to support the PPACA and the “tax” even though the language said “penalty”. The court of public opinion would have turned drastically against the court had Roberts voted with the other justices and he would have been known as the one that divided the court even further than it had been divided following political party lines. He did not want that to happen, so “public opinion” tainted his decision making that resulted in a decision upholding a law that was not written in the language he ruled upon.

Public opinion sways many more decisions than one would like to admit.

As a practical matter it takes a significant supermajority of people to impose their will on the rest by force against committed opposition.

Pure simple majoritarian democracy can not work.

In strongly polarized conflicts with small majorities the majority is just too small to impose its will on a determined minority.

In fact estimates are that you can not have the rule of law, where more than 10% of the people vigorously oppose any law.

All law is enforced one of 3 ways:

Passive support – by those who support the law and conduct their affairs accordingly.
Passive acceptance – by those who do not support the law but are unwilling to disobey it for fear of punishment.
Active resistance – by those who do not support the law and are willing to disobey.

Unless the first group is massive the cost of the law becomes substantial, further every new law adds additional cost, and very quickly you have a police state.

In the real world there is one other option – that is to disregard the rule of law.
To impose a law but to enforce it inconsistently. That is cheaper, it usually keeps the 2nd group in line, but with rare exceptions the 3rd group does as the please – because the cost to compell them to obey is too high.

From 2010 through the present with few exceptions a plurality opposed PPACA, some of the time an absolute majority opposed it.

The public backlash against the Roberts court would have been inconsequential had it ruled properly on PPACA.

In fact the public backlash against PPACA is a significant factor – the single most significant factor in securing republican majorities through out the country.

The court is not the cause of our polarization. Further the left does not vote based on the court, but a significant portion fo the right does.

Many factors contributed to Trump’s election, and many single factors would have resulted in a different outcome if they were different.

One of the most significant was Trump’s list of SCOTUS candidates and his committment to pick from those. That was the single most significant factor to in assuring that the Tea Party, fiscal conservatives and freedom caucus voters voted in 2016. If they had viewed Trump as Hillary lite – just as Romney was, they would have stayed home.

There are many criteria necescary to use force through government – public oppinion is one of those. It is a requirement, but it is NOT sufficient.

I would further note we are talking about “the use of force by government”.

There are many criteria necescary to justify the use of force – if one is missing you may not use force. If one goes away – you may not use force.

It is important to understand that reaching a point where the majority of people want government to do something – is necescary for government to do it. But it is not all that is necscary, and if any criteria justifying the use of force disappears, then the the use of force must end – even if the majority still supports it.

I could be wrong and the left could manage to stoke foundationless outrage to election victories in 2018 and 2020.

But I highly doubt it. This type of intensity is not sustainable without real underlying issues, and those are not present.

Republicans did manage to ride political outrage to victory from 2009 through 2016,
but they could do so because Obama was acting in ways that deeply offended a large republican base and atleast mildly offended the middle. And they did so without truly mobilizing the left.

Democrats are trying to invert and repeat that with Trump.
But they have problems. Even many never trumpers are offended by the extremism of the left,
The republican base remains angry and engergized, many are even taking pleasure in Trump’s tongue lashing the left and the press. Conversely the left has little in the way of issues that have actual legs. This Trump/Russia nonsense not only has failed, but it has done so in a way that self evidently demonstrated that those behind it knew there never was anything there.

Regardless time will tell.

But another huge factor exits.
President Obama presided over a protracted doldrum. He was fortunate to not have a serious downturn, but he took office at the end of a significant downturn and those ALWAYS historically are followed by strong growth – and that did nto occur.

Trump’s election appears to have unchained the economy. It is still early to declare economic victory, but increasingly it appears that there is a Trump Bump of atleast 1.2% in economic growth. That is consequential. While it still means growth lower thna the 20th century average, it is much better than the 1.8% that we were told by the left was the best that could be done.

This is also why this talk of Tarrif’s is so dangerous.

The single most important factor in the 2018 and 2020 elections and in the future of this country will be the economy. Even merely returning to Obama era growth will be a failure.

We will put up with the chaos of Trump if we get a strong economy. We will not do so if we get the Obama economy.

Washington Times – a right leaning site, is running a story that the “deep state” has been actively slow walking Trump appointee security clearances, that they are taking double the time they did under Obama, that this is most obvious at the whitehouse, but that it permeats the entire administration. That the FBI is bringing reports to them in a timely fashion and they are sitting on them. That they are NOT informing Kelley as they are required of potential problems, and that they may be leaking problems to the press.

In the whitehouse kelley has responded by changing procedures so that the FBI delivers its reviews to his office, and briefs Kelley on issues before Kelley forwards the FBI reviews to the Whitehouse EOP.

As has been typical since the election the left has politicized nearly the entire government, and is weaponizing it.

It is interesting because it demonstrates that Clinton paid millions for an army of online hecklers to go onto social media and drown out opposing views of her.

The point is that the left’s argument regarding “influence” is that only the left is allowed to “influence” elections.

Massive real documented paid advocacy by the left is acceptable.

But small mythical advocacy by anyone else is some kind of crime.

I do not beleive Russia’s social media efforts, were consequential nor particularly in favor of one candidate. I think it is evident that much of the claimed efforts are garbage – The left sees Russians under every rock. Anyone posting out5side leftwing norms must be a russian bot. Every anonymous account – must be a russian bot. If you would beleive the left Russian bots own the internet and have reached AI capabilities that no one elsewhere has ever come close to.

But aside from the failure of the left to make a credible claim of signigicant and targeted Russian influence, there is the separate problem of “so what ?”

There is nothing wrong with trying to persuade voters.
There is nothing wrong with it if you are David Brock.
There is nothing wrong with it if you are Vladimir Putin.
Or Sorros, or Koch, or Bloomberg, or …

More Clinton emails are being released all the time. The last batch include several back and forth between Clinton and the IT people for her private email server.

These pose two problems.

The first are that they demonstrate that Clinton herself was heavily involved in decisions requarding the architecture and administration of her private email server – involving herselve in decisions about backups, security as well as moving information from device to device.

This is important because she has denied knowledge and involvement in those things. Claiming under oath that she had no idea about any of the implimentation issues related to her private email server.

Further there is a seperate issues with these emails.
Hillary Clinton was sending Classified material to her privately employed IT people who had no security clearances and explicitly asking them to forward it on to others – most typically Bill Clinton, but sometimes others outside the administration such as Blumenthal.

Yes, Sidney Blumenthal keeps coming up everywhere in everything.

This person that Obama refused to allow any position on Clintons staff, is tied to everything.
He is constantly getting classified information from Hillary, and he is feeding people in the state department information from the Steele Dossier as well as feeding steele information to include in his dossier and driving the creation fo a 2nd separate dossier.

Well once again we hear of deaths at a high school. I am writing this before most information comes out concerning the person doing the crime, how it was committed or how many were injured or killed. I am commenting based on the anticipation of what is to come in the next weeks following this tragedy.

No parent should have to wonder if their child will come home when they send them to school. But that is the world we seem to live in today. There are smart people that should be able to determine why this is happening and how these instances can be prevented.

We will hear those that say guns are the problem and that greater gun control laws are needed. We will hear those that say gun rights are guaranteed by the constitution and laws can not be written to infringe on those rights. We will hear one group calling the others socialist, communist while the other calls out extremist, racist, idiots, etc.

Yes, laws can be written to control the sale of guns and in some years down the road the number of guns may decrease. There may also be laws that ban the sale of legal clips that will limit the number of bullets and that could help down the road as those get taken off the market, legal or black.

But is the issue one of control, or is it one of fixing the problem? We talk of bullying in school and how that needs to change, but then just look at the internet comments on any subject and bullying is the way of life for many. How can we expect a young impressionable mind to grow up respecting others when they see this behavior day in and day out. And when they are at the other end of this activity, with no support mechanism, what are their minds telling them to do? Can we debate political points, or does it always result in name calling and personal put downs? Those same people that talk about finding ways to eliminate bullying are one of the first to turn to that when they disagree with ones political positions. If an athlete says something wrong or accidentally does something that is outside the norms, how do the viewers respond? In many cases, they are ridiculed for something they may not even have noticed they did at the time it happened.

Society today is to blame for the actions we see so often happening. It is society that needs to change in the long run, not more laws to try to prevent an action from happening. It is the root of the action that needs to be removed as that is the cancer that has invaded our country.

As I said, I have little knowledge of what happened today, but I would not be surprised to find this was a young male, an “outcast”, probably from a broken family, with few friends in school, one that has been bullied in the past and something in the last couple days caused him to snap and attack the students or teachers at the school because there was no one to turn to to help him out of this hell he was in. Or he has had a long history of extreme views and no one that guided him to a better place. Not even the internet, where he most likely was one of the loudest negative voices and no one was listening to give him support before this action took place.

So let the months of arguing, name calling. spiteful “discussions” begin and end as they always do. With nothing to find an actual solution to the problem by identifying the cause, but by trying to control negative activity without curing the disease.

From what I have heard, the kid who did this was known to be very disturbed, known to be obsessed with guns, knives and bombs. He had been expelled from the school for making threats against other students. He had also complained about being bullied himself. His social media was loaded with photos of him brandishing guns, and making threats against others. He might as well have had a neon sign on his head, flashing “I will shoot up a school someday.”

There were likely dozens, if not hundreds, of people who could have said something, or done something, or intervened in some way to help him, or to warn about him, or to prevent him from doing this.

Priscilla “He might as well have had a neon sign on his head, flashing “I will shoot up a school someday.”

Or the sign said ” cant someone please help me, I am troubled, I dont know how to get help and my behavior is screaming for help”

Maybe we need to look at better laws that would allow schools and other qualified parties to request mental evaluations after certain criteria is met to help these people before they do these things. In many instances, these individuals know they will die during these attacks and that is their ultimate goal. To stop the internal mental pain they feel.

Dave, please reread what I have posted. I did not say I support any more laws to control guns. I only stipulated that I would accept that those actions may make a difference for sake of my arguement. For the record and based on many previous comments, I do not believe that more gun laws would make a difference.

My comments are based on the actions taken by the government employees, from the school to the FBI. What is the laws in this country when someone is considered a threat to others and themselves? What is the laws in the country when people make threats against others? What are the laws when someone is thought to be one that will cause harm to ithers?

This young man was like so many others. He was making threats and like so many others they were ignored.

Point: many want to restrict liberties of everyone to insure safety from a few, while the actions should be to restrict the liberties of a few to insure safety of everyone.

Just out from Judicial Watch today – the FBI investigated Omar Mateen a couple of years before his mass shooting.

FBI SAC Rand Glass
“We do NOT believe he is a terrorist, I don’t believe he will go postal or anything like that.”

The very best of psychologists today have a poor track record identifying those who will act violently in the future.

Why do you expect that the ordinary psychologist will do better ?

The world is not perfect – nor are psychologists. We can not make it more perfect by passing more laws. We can not increase the skills of those in positions of power merely my putting more people in power and giving them more power.

All of us would like a “terrorist detector” or a dangerous schizophrenic detector.

Unfortunately the truly dangerous people do not look any different from thousands what are not dangerous. We like to think we can tell – after the fact. but unless you are prepared to lock millions up because some MIGHT do something bad in the future we have no effective means of addressing this.

We do not live in “the minority report” world we do not have an effective division of “pre-crime”.

So Dave, you a smart enough to realize that if these things keep happening, all the Libertarian thinking and GOP gun rights are going to go out the door when enough legislators feel the heat from voters.

So the choices are three.
1. Do nothing as you propose since no laws will change anything.
2. Legislate tougher gun laws to make it more difficult for people to buy and own weapons.
3. Work with mental health professionals, state law enforcement, school officials, religious leaders and any other interested parties to offer alternative methods to reduce thiese murders from taking place.

I dont like the first alternative. I dont think number two will provide relief until the black market is free of illegal weapons years from now. So for me, number three seems to offer a better solution given each state or locality could try something different until something was found that worked.

Things are not happening any more frequently than ever before. We are just paying more attention.

At the same time support for gun rights is higher than it has ever been.

Finally as with many other things we are on the cusp of gun control becoming completely impossible rather than merely impracticle.

I think a part of what is polarizing the country is even though government increasingly infringes on our rights, by making stupid laws, modern advances are increasing our freedom even faster.
Further no one knows the laws that are passed that constrain them.

Myriads of our laws depend on the knowledge and fear of prosecution of sellors in the US.

Lets say “bump stocks” are made illegal.
US Gun stores likely will not touch them.
But they can still be fabricated on a 3d printer, and they likely will be purchaseable from overseas sellors who do not even know what our laws are.

Regardless, prohibition not only does nto work – but as we move foward it is increasingly LESS effective.

Gun control debate is a long term solution/non-solution depending on who is in office. I am not debating that now.

Doing nothing seems to be the accepted alternative except for heated debates for months until something else replaces it in the news.

I want to know why we do not try SOMETHING NEW! Fund some different alternatives to mental health/community support/high risk intervention. Read the articles about Cruz and he was a time bomb ready to explode. If we try 5000 different ideas and one of them works, that is no different than inventors trying different ideas until they created the Gatling Gun , a new drug curing some disease or alternating current that replaced Kerosene lamps. that is what we do, we invent, we explore, we find new and better ways of doing something.

With the issue of young white males going postal on a school only ends with two alternatives. Gun control and “we can’t” ——-W H Y???????

Doing nothing isn ‘t “the accepted alternative” it is the only moral choice.

You may not use force to infringe on the rights of others merely because you “feel” than might be effective.

You may not do so because the universe is not to your liking.

The use of force against others must be justified, and the acceptable justifications are limited.

Further that is more than a philosophical or moral point.

I am not personally a “utilitarian” – Though JS Mill was or very nearly was.
But there is an interesting interplay between utilitarianism and morality – which is insepatable from individual liberty.

That interplay – which almost brings me to utilitarianism, is that our moral foundations – such as free will, are the only arrangement that can possibly work.

I get accused of being utopian – but libertarianism is quite far from utopian.
Nothing else does or can possibly work.

We have seen every single permutation of leftism fail – thought the left continues to make this pretense that magically with the right people, it will somehow succeed.

Regardless, look at the world of the left at the moment.
You can say whatever you wish about the right – and I am not conservative, but they are not imploding. It is possible that Republicans may be swept from power in the next election, that Trump will be impeached, that the left will rule for a while.
But conservatives and republicans are not imploding,. they face no existential crisis.

Right now the left is facing an existential crisis.

Prof. Tribe – a constitutional law professor who I respected, and who wrote one of the most important books of the past 50 years on constitutional law, has almost completely whigged out.
He is making bizzarre arguments that Nunes is guilty of obstruction of justice.

Despite the fact that the past 18 months have turned their entire Trump/Russia argument to garbage, large portions of the left or increasingly tin foil hat certain that whoever Mueller is questioning today will supply the magic beans, provide the proof of a conspiracy that is logically impossible.

Anyway the point is that big government in all forms FAILS – that failure is intrinsic. It is unavoidable. The failure is partly rooted in efficiency and partly rooted in human nature.

Even Priscilla periodically argues that we need a “law against that”.

Every form of actual misconduct that government can and should legitimately address is covered by the three principles of government that I constantly harp on.

But an ever growing body of laws can not work. It MUST ultimately become either so heavy that society grinds to a halt, or enforced so arbitrarily and capreciously that we have little more than anarchy with institutions.

Put simply – with all the arguments you have made – even if you win – ultimately you lose.

If you are correct about the majority and its ability to impose its will on the rest of us by force – ultimately that model fails. Further they failure is inherent by design. Majoritarianism must ultimately devolve to a form of elitism – because the overlap between each majority on each issue is incomplete and with enough issues the actual governing body is a small elite.

This is also why leftism becomes religious and dogmatic – because it must move as many people to the same views on everything or fail. It can not survive conflict.

The world will not likely ever become libertopia. But it must ultimately return to greater individual freedom, because everything else must fail – Failure is intrinsic to all forms of statism.
They can not possibly be as efficient as more libertarian structures.

We have myriads of forms of voluntary action – including voluntary group actions as through churches, unions civic groups, or any other means by which people voluntarily act together for a shared purpose.

If you wish to discus non-governmental means to address any problem – I am happy to listen. Possibly participate.
factors such as whether you are offering an emotional feel good solution
or whether what you propose is proven effective
are in this context up to to those participating.

If you and 10,000 others wish to join together to release flocks of doves as a means to end mass killings at schools – you are free to do so. There is no requirement that private action make sense, or be effective or logical or anything – EXCEPT voluntary.

But government action is different. No matter how large a majority you get behind an action by government it is still force and still an infringement on the rights or even the small number who oppose.

We can only morally infringe on the rights of others when we can justify that infringement.

The requirements for justification are narrow.
Proven Effect is a requirement for justification, but it is not sufficient.

This is my core political issue. If you are not talking about government action, or private action to influence government action – then I do not have a firm position, and regardless, I have no right to impede you.

BTW we have an infinite number of things that we can research. We can not try them all.

When we choose to research cures for cancer we are concurrently chosing not to do something else.

Which is why government should not be involved.

Absent government our efforts will be directed in many directions with some getting more and some getting less resources, further based on success or our changing wishes those resources will move reflecting our shifting values.

When government decides – it MUST comes at the expense of some private use of resources, and the choice as to where to direct those resources will be made by some few with power, and not based on our agregate individual values.

This just illustrates the defeatist attitude that exist in this country and why no one can work to find solutions to problems. Can’t never did anything.

You keep accepting we can’t. I will keep saying “good try” when someone tries.

And all your facts about fewer kids being killed and the only reason it is more in the news is because it is covered more is an unacceptable answer. If it happens one time, its unacceptable. Doing nothing, which we have been doing for years is unacceptable.

Just think of the lives saved by open heart surgery and just a few short years ago the thoughts were “we can’t crack open a patients chest and replace 4-5 cardiac arteries. We don’t have the knowledge to do that!”

On your own, or in concert with others who voluntarily share your particular view.
All I oppose is you using force to fell good.

I do not even care if you do something I think is a stupid feel good measure – so long as you do not impose it by force.

“If it happens one time, its unacceptable”

Sentiment – not fact.
The world is not perfect. Bad things happen, ultimately we die.

This is EXACTLY the same argument as with immigration.

We can not prevent every bad thing from happening. We can not save every child in the world.

The fact that you call something unacceptable does not make it so.

Bad things happen. We end up having to accept them and move on.

To the extent we do something – we focus our energy and resources on things we can change.

We have eliminated small pox. We have very nearly elminiated polio.

Someday we may know how to eliminate mass killings.
Today we do not have a clue.

Regardless, doing so – actually elminating them involves identifying and curing individuals.
There is currently no cure for paranoid schizophrenia.
Finding one would benefit more than a couple of dozen school children a year, it would benefit 2.2 million paranoid schitzophrenics.

Priscilla – it is nearly always obvious after the fact that this particular person was going to act violently.

In the real world the overwhelming majority of people with the same signs and issues do not ever act violently.

We are incredibly bad at determining who will act violently.

About 1/3 of the prison population is psychopaths.
Psychopaths that have already acted violently are near 100% certain to act violently again.
Though the majority of psychopaths never engage in violence.
Still those in prison typically already have.

Despite this statitical certainty of recidivism, psychopaths are by far the most successful inmates at getting paroled early. They have an invredible track record of fooling even shrinks who are experts on psychopathy.

Dr. Robert Hare – on of the worlds most renowned experts on criminal psychopaths and responsible for a 40 point test that is incredibly effective at identifying psychopaths has still been repeatedly fooled by them – even to the extent of placing himself in serious danger.

We do not live in a perfect world. We do not have the means of accurately knowing ahead of time who will do horrible things and who will not.

Well, well, well. According to Buzzfeed (yeah, I know) a You Tube user in Mississippi flagged Nikolas Cruz’s threat to shoot up a school, back in September. Looks like they interviewed the guy who sent in the tip, but never contacted Cruz?

Priscilla, as I said in my earlier comment, the voices for gun control would start being heard again. And that is the case. I will stipulate that if we had tighter controls and we had bans on high capacity clips, these may reduce the possibilities these killing would be reduced in years to come once most were off the black market. We have also heard people talking about mental health issues and others saying there is no way to control people like this because mental health is not an exact science and we never will know who and when this will happen. We have heard them say that we can not put everyone in a mental health lock down hospital. I will stipulate that this is also true.

But my point in this issue is the lack of common sense that NO ONE seems to use in any of these instances. There is always something in hind sight that was a warming sign something like this would happen. I will also stipulate that some of these signs are not as apparent until after the fact.

But with all the possibilities of something like this happening, I have to ask.
1. This guy was on some peoples radar. Why was he not on those that could do something about it. What happened with this report to the FBI?
2. How did he get into the school to pull the alarm with a handful of weapons?
3. I can buy a home protection system for my house that automatically locks the doors and has a camera. How much would a system cost each school to auto lock doors and keep people out? Put a 1/4 cent hike in sales tax to pay for them or take money from the lottery to pay for them. Better yet, use some infrastructure funding for every school in America. Let the dems or reps bitch about that one!

Many of our schools here have their door open in the morning and at dismissal. All other times they are locked, you buzz the office, they see you through the camera and the resource officer escorts them to the office.

There are way to many can’ts when someone make a suggestion. Takes away rights!. Change the constitution. Cost too much! Take 1 cent out of every dollar spent and fund school security systems. Can’t ID everyone! ID as many as legal and possible and find ways to assist them. You can’t trust government to stop once they begin making laws! Now that one is the major problem because when trust in government does not exist, then nothing gets done. Politicians can set the example to begin working together on issues and not setting the example that fighting is the best way to accomplish your goals.

But the best way to fix things like this is USE SOME DAMN COMMON SENSE!. And yes, there will be those that say common sense means one thing to one person and something to someone else. It was said by one in history that “we’re are all born ignorant, but it takes hard work to remain stupid”. In this day and age, people have done a good job in that respect.

Banning things grows black markets – it does not shrink them. It is already possible to make an AR-15 in your basement – legally, and making that illegal is not realistic.

How well has the drug war worked ? How well did prohibition work ?

Why is it that anyone actually beleives banning things works ?

Australia succeeded in significantly reducing the number of guns in the country.

There was no effect on mass killings. Though there was a reduction in Mass gun killings.
Death by arson is so much more appealing.

I have addressed “common sense” before – the belief of someone that some approach is reasonable and effective doesn’t make it so.

Gun control does not work – end of story. Calling something “common sense” does not make it either or make it work. I am dubious about the use of force against rights – even when it is effective. Absent PROOF that some “common sense” claim actually works, it is an immoral infringement on liberty.

You can stipulate whatever you want – the fact is that no regulations – “common sense” or otherwise have ever proven themselves to be effective.
Wishing otherwise does not make it so. Calling something “common sense” does nto make it effective.

All this rot is just stupid feel good measure to make believe that something has been done,.

Lots and lots of people are “on the radar”. Only a small portion of those ever act.
We do not know how to tell those who will from those who wont.
Unless you wish to incarcerate them all you get us nowhere.

It is trivial to dream up ways to prevent things like this. That does nto make them work.

Turning schools into jails is really really bad for education.

We could cyber charter everyone – then we do not have a whole lot of kids in one place.
Of course the “Home school columbine” happened only a mile or so from my home.

Regardless, our eduction is already 4 times as expensive as 40 years ago while being less effective.

Money does not actually make problems better – often it makes them worse.

Approx 1000 kids 4-14 are murdered each year. more than 20 times that die of other causes.
Why are you fixated on spending money that will not accomplish something to solve a problem that is both rare and for now insoluable.

“And yes, there will be those that say common sense means one thing to one person and something to someone else.”

Dave, you are doing an excellent job proving my point. I dont give a rats ass about the debate on guns or no guns, on clips or no clips, on automatic weapons or no automatic weapons. It is what everyone has been doing since Columbine. Argueing and debating until the issue fades from the news and nothing happens until the next occurance.

What has anyone done to address the problem? Not one thing!!!! Everyone has their “can’ts ” or “won’ts” when it comes to trying to find workable solutions.

With thinking like that we would all still be riding horses in Europe.

You keep coming back to “force” with most every comment I am making and the only thing I have said that could be construed as force is better identification and evaluation of individuals that have a historical past that could result in harm to others.

For instance, this young man posted a video that said he was going to be the next school shooter. This was sent to the FBI and they have stated that they could not track down who sent the video. It was also stated that google refused to cooperate with the FBI in identifying the sender of this video. So apparently the FBI gave up.

So maybe “force” is a position I am taking when I believe law enforcement should have the ability to look into threats of this nature. Maybe when they see who sent this and then look into other postings and other actions in the past, they could question the individual and have a mental health individual evaluate the situation. The “force” you refer to is being brought on by ones own anti-social actions that refer to “harm” of others.

Which is worse, force or harm?

In your world, you should be able to say whatever you want whenever you want to without anyone having the ability to investigate. SCOTUS has already ruled that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

If the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other alphabet agencies can wiretap anyone’s phone or e-mail because they may have had contact with someone overseas that may or may not be a terrorist, then I would go the step further and say someone within the states who makes a clear threat to kill others,law enforcement should have the the ability to find that person and investigate that threat. That threat seems to be a “substantive evil” congress has a right to prevent.

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

If you are discussing your own individual actions or those in voluntary cooperation with others that do not involve government or force, I have no right to interfere.

To be clear – posting that you are going to be the next school shooter – is a justification for an FBI investigation.

I am not familiar with the rest of the facts. There are credible claims that the FBI screwed up – and maybe they did. At the same time even government is made of humans and humans are imperfect – more so inside of government.

While I am not opposed to holding the FBI accountable for mistakes. At the same time we must expect government will make mistakes and we must structure government such that mistakes do not result in violations of rights.

“So maybe “force” is a position I am taking when I believe law enforcement should have the ability to look into threats of this nature. ”

1). Not Maybe – you are talking about force.
2). Everything that government does must be well defined – with bright lines – AGAIN, we are dicussion government and therefore FORCE.

We have rules for what the government can investigate and what it can not.
We also have rules governing those investigations.

None of this is arbitraty. None of this is discretion. If we find the rules do not work – we change the rules. Regardless the rule of law means they government is constrained by rules.

Adressing what you have asserted – and presuming it is accurate – I am not challenging you I just have not followed the details of the FBI’s prior involvment.

Asserting that he would be the next school shooter – is absolutely justification for inquiry.
I expect it would also constitute probable cause to get a warrant.

All that you post after ‘maybe” requires justification for an investivation and possibly probable cause.

In the end you still end up with a “mental health evaluation” – at that point you have a serious problem. If that assessment came back – this person is likely to harm others, the current state of psychology can not reach that conclusion to the degree of certainty needed to use force.

You can investigate this guy, you can get a warrant,
I do not think you can get a “mental health assessment” without his consent.
And if you get one that says “will likely kill others” – you still can not act without his consent.

You are forgetting that for every person that matches all the characteristics of Mr. Cruz – only a tiny portion actually act.

Prior restraint is nearly always immoral.
Once people have acted badly you can use force. Before the standard is incredibly high.

Dave, I know that we can’t stop bad things from happening, and I know that psychology and psychiatry are very inexact sciences.

But this kid’s behavior and background screamed that he was at extreme risk for committing an act of violence. His adoptive parents were both dead, his mother having died very recently. He had been expelled from school. He had no friends. He killed small animals. He had been flagged, to the FBI, for online comments. He belonged and/or followed more than one violent, racist extremist online organizations.

Someone should have done something. His parents, his guardians, his teachers, counselors at his schools, the police, the FBI, all of the above. Gotten him some help, whatever was available. My understanding is that this community had the resources to help him, but he just fell thorough the cracks.

To Ron’s point, all we ever hear is what we can’t do. Never what we can do.

Every time I hear someone say “enough is enough,” and start spouting off about how these things could all be prevented by more gun control, I just want to scream.

No parent should have to – can be followed by an infinite number of things, and yet as parents we do. The overwhelming majority of us are fortunate – our children make it to adulthood without cancer, suicide, violence or other serious maladies. But not all of us.

We can and should feel sympathy for those who are not so fortunate as we are.

With respect to mass killers – overall these are trending down, like all violence.
Regardless this is an incredibly rare event – which is why it makes the national news.

I have a twitter feed – fatal encounters that tweets everytime someone is killed by law enforcement – I usually get a couple of tweets a day.

Further many people are broken, some badly broken. Maybe in some Star Trek future all will be fixable, but today must mental illnesses have no effective treatment.
Most if not all mass killers are paranoid schizophrenics.
Paranoid schizophrenics are about twice as likely as the rest of us to act violently.
But a tiny fraction of them are responsible for all or nearly all mass killings.
We not only have no treatment, we have no means of identifying which paranoid schizophrenics are going to act violently. Absent propholactically incacerating large numbers of people – nearly all of which will never actually engage in violence, we have no remedy.

The Intercept has published an article on Wikileaks involvement in the 2016 election starting in lat 2015. Based on 11.000 Wikileaks messages and tweets.

The key take aways:

There is no love lost between Assange and Hillary Clinton.

Wikileaks wanted ANY republican to defeat Clinton – not for love of republicans.

Assange’s perspective was that if a republican won Democrats would return to their Bush era positions opposing war, the CIA, NSA, and interventionist government, and would have sufficient strength to reign in the worst republican impulses.
While if Clinton won she would unite democrats and republicans is more war and intervention, violence and surveilance.

These messages provide further evidence that there is no link between Wikileaks and Russia,
and that wikileaks did not supply the Trump campaign with prior warning of anything it did.

There is much to be critical of Wikileaks, but nothing that confirms ANY of the left’s conspiracy theory.

Assange is an ass, a mysoginist, possibly an anti-semite and egotistical, but Wikileaks did not collaborate or coordinate with either Russia or Trump.

That sounds true, Dave. Hillary really represented the worst case scenario for Assange, but I never understood how people could believe that WikiLeaks would try to help any Republican, unless it was just to help defeat her.

Assange at most controls what Wikileaks publishes.
Hackers and whistleblowers accross the world control what information it has available to it to publish. That information is only politically tainted – to the extent that specific hackers and whistle blowers lean one way or the other.

Clinton loathes Assange – and the enmity is shared. I have zero doubt that Assange would do anything in his power to F’over Clinton – and she would return the favor if she could.

Given the power to do so, I would have no problem beleiving that Assange would hack the election, or Clinton’s email, or social media.

But Assange does not have the power to do so. WikiLeaks publishes what hackers and whistleblowers individually bring to them.

I a purely hypothetical context – I have no problems beleiving that Assange would assure that anything evil he got about Clinton got published, I have no problems beleiving he would endeavor to inspire hackers to get him dirt on Clinton. I have no problems beleiving he would publish dirt from Russia, Russian Agents or trolls. Nor do I doubt Assange would conspire with most anyone to bring down Clinton.

But hypothetical is not real. Assange does not control or orchestrate the information he gets.

The probability is very low that the WikiLeaks DNC emails came from a hack rather than a leak – though the DNC was absolutely hacked atleast twice – once in 2015 and once later.

The probability is even lower that the hackers were actually Russia.

There is only one way in which the DNC could be hacked by Russians AND we would know it.
And that is if the Russians wanted us to know.

Absolutley the Russians hack all kinds of things – though the majority of Russian hackers are NOT stake sponsored. They are primarily criminal whose ties to the state are at best – occaisonally Putin’s interests in return for Russia turning a blind eye. Regardless, Russians are only a small portion of the worlds hackers. North Korea and China have far larger state sponsored hacking. Further Crowdstrike – which is the only real source for the “russia did this” meme, has misidentified hacks – including APT28 and APT29 hacks as of russian origen repeatedly when we ultimately found those hacks to be from China or Turkey.

You will only know the source of a hack today one of 2 ways:

The hacker wants you to know.
There is an after the fact leak confirming the source of the hack (Stuxnet)
The hacker is an incompetent rank amateur.

Only the first MIGHT fit Russia.

Beyond Russia, China and North Korea, Iran. Pakistan and the US have significant state sponsored hacking programs.

Outside of government there are vast armies of hackers – some ideologically or religiously motivated.

Comey’s testimony repeatedly addresses that specifulation – the DOJ/FBI were “investigating” Trump from approx. July 2016 forward. They were admittedly using an incredibly narrow legalistic and distorted definition of investigate – to be able to tell Trump that he was NOT being investigated.

With respect to speculation regarding Rice and others – while it is speculation, there are only a few actual alternatives.

According to the CDC “the suicide rate for girls ages 15 to 19 doubled from 2007 to 2015, when it reached its highest point in 40 years, according to the CDC. The suicide rate for boys ages 15 to 19 increased by 30 percent over the same time period. The analysis looked at data from 1975 to 2015, the most recent year those statistics were available.”

these same studies looked at fa!ily environment, bullying, sexual orientation, social support and mental health availability.

Seems strange that during the same period that mass shootings on school properties increased, the suicide rate also increased. And the same causative factors seem to be linked.

Mass shootings on school property” is far too narrow to be meaningful.

Though one possible cause of change with that very specific statistic would be gun free school zones. Decrease the odds of encountering someone armed and you increase the ease with which a mass killing can occur. You essentially put out catnip for mass killers.

I suspect the increase in suicide rates and similar things is tied to the heightend security or childrearing. The more antiseptic you make the environment the more fragile those in it.

Every major global epidemic FOLLOWED a significant advance in environmental health.

And this ties to my comments about working on mental health issues HOW? These statistics are meaningless to my debate.

How did all the experts miss the issue with this kid? How did the experts fail to respond to his You Tube video? How did the mental health clinic fail to recognize the problems this kid had after his parents died and he shuffled between families? What can the schools do when they do identify people that are on the verge of snapping, like a couple of his teachers had warned against? Statistics are meaningless when looking at issues like this.

If one person looks at these issues and comes up with a possible solution, then that could be used to prevent the next one.

I do know that “I cant” wont help.
Debating gun control for another year or so wont help.
Arguing on the internet and calling each other names like I have already seen in other articles won’t help.
Accepting the fact that nothing will help wont help.

But keep reading the articles as they come out and see what direction this moves in over the next month or so.

Because in the real world there are not actually all that many actual experts.

Because there truly are thousands of kids like this who do not ever do any harm.

Because what seems obvious after the fact – is not actually obvious.

“I do know that “I cant” wont help.
Debating gun control for another year or so wont help.
Arguing on the internet and calling each other names like I have already seen in other articles won’t help.
Accepting the fact that nothing will help wont help.”

Given the current state of our knowledge – nothing will help.

It is possible that in a few years that will change.
It is also possible it will take a few centuries.

We solve problems all the time. There are things that were incurable, fatal or horribly debilitating a few years or decades ago that are not now.

John D. Rockefeller offered the equivalent of a billion dollars to any doctor that could save his nephew who had scarlet fever. It could not be done.
Today even the poorest of us will not die from something the richest of us could not protect against a century ago.

We solve new problems every day.
We solve more and faster the wealthier we are.
No matter what we only have the resources and knowledge to solve some problems at the current moment.

Wanting to solve something that is beyond us is no different from Rockefeller – it is not happening.

Emphasize the wrong things at the wrong time and you make life worse not better.

Dave “John D. Rockefeller offered the equivalent of a billion dollars to any doctor that could save his nephew who had scarlet fever. It could not be done.”

That was when 20% or more of those who contacted that disease died from it. Using your thinking that “it could not be done” would mean 20% would still die from it. However, though years of research , testing and trial an error, drugs have been created that now result in less than 1% of individuals dying from scarlet fever.

I live in a world where you have to prove to me something can not be done before I accept it can’t. You live in a world where you have to be proven something can be done before you accept it will happen.

And that is the world we have always lived in. Those that think it can and those that think it can’t.

At any moment in time there are things that can be done, things that can not be done and things that can be done – but only with sufficient resources.

There are two factors that determine what can be done.

Our current knowledge
Our current wealth.

Rockefeller BTW was instrumental in defeating Scarlet fever – just not in the time frame he needed.

Within those two parameters is lies what is probably possible today.
There are problems we can eaisly solve today that were impossible a century ago.
There are problems that we can not solve today no matter what.

And then there is a body of problems in the middle that are to some extent solveable – but at varying cost and varying benefit.

But even given that pool of what is possible.
we are required to make choices.

We only have the wealth to do some of what is possible.
We must triage.

I do not honestly beleive that dealing with “mass killers” is even inside the scope of what is possible today. But in the unlikely event that it is, it would require dedicating massive amounts of wealth to that effort. And that means accomplishing less of other things that are possible and either easier or of greater benefit or both.

But simply it is PERMANENTLY inescapable that we place a value on human life (and everything)

Because that is what allows us to make choices.

Lets just assume that an effective means of addressing Mass School killers can be found and it costs $1T/year – that is about 5% of our economy.

So lets say we decide to go forward with that – and we do not reduce any of the other things we are also trying to accomplish. In other words we somehow magically succeed in taking that from profits and growth

That means that next year growth will be -2$ – in otherwords our standard of living will have declined a small amount.

You can say that is fine – less dinner out, less movies, smaller homes – but this loss is cumulative.
The next year we will be 2% further short.

The bottom line is that humans have a limited capacity to accomplish things.
That capacity is based on a number of things – our numbers our freedom, our resources,

Many of the things that do not seem so altruistic – producing party hats, as still critical.
Because everything contributes to growing standard of living and growing standard of living is what makes it both possible to learn how to solve more problems and to be able to afford to do so.

This is also why free markets in just the last 40 years have done more to benefit the least well off in the world than all the charity in the entire history of the world combined.

Desparately poor people in China and india have benefitted more from those countries bad forays into capitalism, than all the mother theresa’s in the world.

AGAIN as a child the nuns in my school were collecting nickels and pennies in milk cartons for the millions of starving kids in bangeledesch.

Today the left is railing because 100 workers are killed in a factory fire.

Absolutely we should do something about the factory fires – but those factories, those horrible abusive, murderous factories are the difference between desparate starvation and merely being poor for hundreds of thousands of people.

The contrasts are more clear – starker in less developed countries but they are the same in developed countries were they are better hidden. The wealthier we are the more we can do.
To do more we must strive to be more wealthy. fighting some important cause will leave us worse off even if we succeed if we do so at the expense of growth.

“I live in a world where you have to prove to me something can not be done before I accept it can’t. ”

That is not the real world. The fact that what can and can not be done is malleable does not mean it is infinite.

The entire purpose of prices is to compel us to triage what we attempt.
Because everything is not possible, and even of everything that is possible, we do not have the resources to do all of what we are able to. The choices we make ALWAYS come at the expense of something else.

After Flynn’s guilty plea, the judge on the case was removed and replaced.

The current judge is the same one that heard the Ted Stevens case that ewsulted int he case ultimately tanking because the DOJ/FBI witheld exculpatory evidence.

Interestingly Flynn’s plea bargain terminated his right to further discovery (that is relatively normal), But the new judge is having none of that.

Shortly after changing judges sentencing was significantly delayed – that too is often normal.
At the same time the new judge has ordered Mueller to turn over vast troves of the evidence against Flynn. There is also a non-disclosure on that evidence that is actually working.

Regardless there are rumblings that Flynn may withdraw his plea.

Most people do not realize that is possible – until sentencing is complete a plea bargain is not binding. That is also why Flynn’s agreement not to seek further evidence is meaningless – because Flynn’s attorney’s can always say – provide us the evidence or we withdraw the plea.

We should pay careful attention to the Flynn case – as Flynn and his lawyers have access to Muellers case in a way no one outside the investigation does.
While they are not going to “leak” anything because that would harm Flynn,
they and the court are going to make choices based on what they are seeing.

Delay’s stalling, or a withdraw of the plea agreement mean that Mueller is holding a very bad hand.

If Flynn is able to show corruption and unethical behavior by the Mueller team, I believe that the investigation should be shut down, especially after the indictments announced today.

If we have spent $10 million dollars and untold hours and effort on an totally rogue investigation, which has forced a 3 star general, who was doing his job, to plead guilty to a process crime of which he may not even be guilty, and has now resulted in the indictments of some Russian small potatoes who were meddling in our politics to no avail and with no collusion from any American, then this whole special prosecutor thing has totally jumped the shark, and the American public has been had.

Priscilla, and while the FBI is on their snipe hunt, they totally drop the ball , not once, but twice on reports concerning Cruz. Coulda, woulda shoulda mighta’ saved 17 lives, might not, but we will never know. IMHO the FBI is complecent in the deaths because they did not follow their own advice. Someone saw something, someone said something, someone sat on their ass and did nothing. That someone needs to be fired.r

Just to be clear Ron, I am not defending the mistakes the FBI made with Cruz.

But I am noting that government is going to make mistakes.
And sometimes those mistakes will result in people dying.

This is not avoidable – the government can not know everything.
it is made of humans, and humans make mistakes – alot of them.

In the real world the best systems fail in a way that minimizes harm.
Because perfection is unacheivable.

In fact often things are designed to fail specific ways.

I remember seeing destructive testing of tractor axles in a plant I visited once.

They would test an axle to failure – and then strengthen the location that failed.

At the same time they ultimately had to do two things – deliberately make specific parts of the axle weaker – because given enough stress every axle will fail, and you want to control where and how it fails. this is true of concreate buildings to, you NEVER want the concrete to fail in a building, you always want the steel to fail first, because concrete fails suddenly, explosively and without warning. Steel fails slowly and gradually not suddenly.

Well the other issue with axle testing was they had to be careful not to keep constantly improving the axle – until it because as strong as the next axle up for the next larger tractor.
The objective is not to make everything infinitely strong.

Dave, “But I am noting that government is going to make mistakes.
And sometimes those mistakes will result in people dying.”

I understand this completely. But I also can not buy into your position that government can not play a role in finding some solutions that could prevent a few of these from taking place. Since my original post, your government failure position has taken on a much stronger position in this latest murder.

The issue at hand for them at this point in time is how do they overcome the total misappropriation of manpower and energies on the presidential investigation that COULD have led to people not paying attention to the real horrors that may come. NO ONE will convince me that all the energies being directed on an indictment of Trump did not have something to do with the fact the FBI overlooked the issues that were brought to their attention about Cruz. Just the attention given there could distract from real issues.

But the other issue is one concerning mental health. This keeps coming up time and time again. Some will say that government plays no role, that is the private sector. But if you look at insurance, the private sector has done nothing to improve mental health services and in fact, many have reduced service coverage. Someone can go to the ER, either on their own or being taken due to threatening suicide, they may be seen by the staff, their coverage is checked and since their is not specific diagnosis, coverage would be denied, so they are sent home. Next thing you know, they or a loved on is dead. Or many are dead.

So the issue is not one of the government dictating, insurance dictating or any one dictating. It is everyone working together to try an find a better solution to a situation we have today that is not working. Mass shooting are just the tip of the iceberg concerning mental health.

Why can a woman walk into a clinic and get an abortion, either paid for by insurance of government funding, but that same woman with a mental issue can not find a mental clinic to help her because no one funds that coverage. You will say no one should cover the abortion, so then we have mental health and abortion not covered and services not available. Is that really the answer?

I do not think so. Each and ever occurrence like florida needs to be cut open all ways possible and diagnosed to see what can be changed. I think government can provide some funding for research to see if better alternative are available. You probably do not and i accept that is your position.

Volunarily – that is acceptable – amoung other reasons because a voluntary arrangement does nto preclude one from saying – in this instance violating convention is the right choice.
Solutions that are not “one size fits all” should not be imposed by government.

Narrowing choices voluntarily is not actually a reduction in freedom – you are always free to change your mind, there is just a consequence.

Narrowing choices through government is always at the expense of freedom, chaning your mind – ever when there is no harm or possibly a good, is stil a crime and punishable.

Next the only permissable apriori restiction on liberty is the knowledge that if there is harm their will be consequences.

Always remember the ultimate objective is the reduction of actual harm.

Government is inherently top down.

While most things outside of government are bottom up – even top down solutions in business or families or … are subject to bottom up challenges and iterative refinement.

Law and government are not subject to iterative refinement.

To the extent they are itterative – it is not interative improvement but getting worse itteratively.

Going further that anyone – congress, the president, the administration, diplomats who express views on issues inside of other countries is criminal.

You have far more faith in government than I.

The comparisions are not perfect, but:

The entire development of the rocket and space flight up to but not including the V2 was almost entirely done privately – mostly by Robert Goddard who was launching more sophisticated rockets than Von Braun in the 30’s in Arizona.
From the 40’s through the 21st century Grownments took over and drove most everyone else out. that is typical of government. Trainloads of wealth were spent.
There were accomplishments – but still enormous amounts of wealth spent.

I do not want to make too much of a hero of Musk – he is not alone, he is partly government subsized, and he has built on government work.

But in a short time he got to the Falcon Heavy – whose capacity is only exceeded by the Saturn V and a rocket from the USSR both of which cost multiple billions of dollars are not reusable and have not flown in decades.

The Falcon’s are 80-95% re-usable – more than even the space shuttle,
Total cost is less than 100M.

Watching the boosters return and land vertically is incredible.
Government could have solved that problem decades ago. It did not.
Why ? Because government is incredibly bad at not just doing things, but figuring out what should be done.

Musk is on schedule for 100 launches this year. with current prices of $2000/lb and going down to $500/lb soon.

Further Musk is just in the spotlight at the moment – Allen and Bezos have their own competing projects.

There is a program for a government rocket similar to Falcon Heavy – it has been on the boards for decades. It is mostly on paper – very little has been built – though I think NASA is promissing it for 2024. Hah!.

Today – for the first time in 4 decades it is possible for man to return to the moon.

Government is horrible at the very things you want to target it at.
Worse still it drives everything else away.

It is virtually impossible to compete with government – government will not let you,
and it is competition that makes us wealthier and helps us solve our problems.

Evern research is actually much less important than you make it.

We do not need “research” to address “mass school shootings” we need experiments.

At most they prove our election laws are broke and not practically enforceable.

Read the indictment and explain to me what provision of the indictiment would not apply to “Voice of america” ?

What part would not apply to the Washington Post or to the New York Times – when commenting on Russian elections ?

What part of it would not apply to americans on Twitter or Facebook commenting on Russian Elections ?

Where do we get this arrogance, that we own the internet, and that we get to decide what others say there ?

Where do we get the arrogance to beleive that our laws apply globally ?

With very few exceptions all of this was performed from Russia – according to the indictment.

As I noted fundimentally this points to the flaws in our own election laws.

You just plain flat out can not regulate speech.
And political speech is the most protected form of speech.

You want to be angry because Russians or Nigerians or Germans express views on american politics ? Fine, take that anger out in the voting booth.

But at its core these indictments assert that it is criminal to attempt to persuade.

They but the ludicrous thesis of the left that voters are stupid and must be protected from selct points of view by our political overloads.

If this indictment is legitimate – then why not indict Christopher Steele ? He is a foreign national was was paid to “influence” the US election ?

Why not indict the guardian or the Telegraph.

Why not indict Conrad Black ?
Or John Oliver ?

How about indicting every illegal alien that engaged in any form of political advocacy ?

This is more of this leftist (and sometimes rightist) garbage that anything we do not like should be a crime.

And I really hate these garbage charges like “conspiracy to defraud the US”

You can not conspire illegally to commit a non-crime.

Fraud requires a real harm – it is very nearly impossible to make a legal case for real harm based on expression.

I am not sure how this is going to go down publicly.

Obviously the left is going to celebrate and concurrently whig out.

But both Rosenstein and the indictment make clear – No US persons were knowing parts of this.

Anyway I am less sure how moderates and those on the right will respond.

I beleive that if Mueller had actually been able to connect this to the Trump Campaign Trump could face a serious backlash from the right – people do not always respond logically.

But some aspects of logic are innate.

The left’s argument has always required Trump voters to be convinced that they were somehow duped. persuading someone that they are stupid is a really really tough sell.

Essentially the left is trying to do successfully what they claim that Russia successfully did – change peoples minds radically.

There is enormous amounts of evidence – advertising and persuasion just do not work that way.

It is relatively easy to get someone to do something they want to do.
It is relatively easy to get someone to not do what they do not want to do.
It is relatively easy to get people to do something sooner than they would have otherwise.
Or to shift their choices from one thing they already like to another thing they already like.

It is not possible to get people to buy something they do not want, to vote for someone they hate.

US 18 CFR 1001 is draconian. Applied literally as written it is arguable that you could prosecute Trump or Obama or any other polititican for an inaccurate public statement – because another federal employe might hear it.

It is also disturbing because law enforcement is fully permitted to lie to you during an interview.

I have been really really made regarding Flynn from the begining – and it only gets worse with time.

I do not know whether he is a “good man” some of the rumors of things Mueller did not charge are pretty disturbing.

But I still can not figure out what it is that Flynn misrepresented that got him in Trouble.
Trump could (and still can’t) figure it out either. There is a press interview where he is saying
Flynn is a good man
but he had to resign
but I can not understand why he had to resign.

From what we have subsrquently learned his conversations with Kisylak were directed by others – among those Kuschner.

He did not deviate from the script – meaning HE only raised the topics he was directed to.
The topics he purportedly lied about were raised by Kislyak and dispatched quickly – with Flynn saying he could not talk about that until after the election.

The FBI had tapped Kislyak – which is to be expected. I would be shocked if Flynn did not just assume that to be true. Otherwise he never should have been National Security Advisor.

Even the US 18 CFR 1001 – and most false statement crimes have a requirement that the misrepresentation have the possibility of affecting the investigation.

In otherwords it is not enough to lie. You must lie about something that the person you are lying to does not know is false.

If you come to court and testify that day is night – you can not be convicted of perjury.

Strzok knew exactly what Kislyak had said before interviewing him.
We are dealing with a small error of accuracy, not something that sent the FBI off in the wrong direction.

The idea that, as reported, “someone close to Nikolas Cruz” (maybe his guardian? a relative?) called the FBI hotline, and very specifically indicated that Cruz had the ability and the mindset to commit a mass shooting, and absolutely nothing was done about it, is about as serious an indictment of the current system as I can think of.

We have this FBI “Tips Hotline” and it is basically a joke. Apparently, your “tip” goes nowhere. I did read that it is a centralized system, i.e. it is one federal hotline, and we’re supposed to trust that the federal hotline people (person? no one?) then passes the the “tip” on to the proper field office for action.

It’s a metaphor for the whole federal government…an ineffective, centralized system that can’t or won’t do its job.

I disagree with this notion that government failure is a reason for more government.

I assume government failure always.

In everything where it is possible tasks should not be allocated to govenrment.
Private failure occurs too – but private failure does not have systemic consequences.
Further we learn from private failure – not by having a national dialog.
But by those closes to the problem figuring out how to not fail again.

Finally where govenrment must do something. I expect failure
and I am more insterested in assuring that it is not organized and systemic, than anything else.

When you are looking at something – government or otherwise, you MUST assume mistakes will be made. Further you should assume that mistakes will be more common where the consequences for mistakes are less frequent.
I would note this is recursive. If as an example you say that we must have a system where there are consequences for mistakes – like being fired. There will be mistakes firing people too.
Further when you say mistakes will be made – most will be innocent or incompetent but some will be malicious. Lots of people get fired by bad people for bad reasons.
We can not build rule based systems that will not have mistakes, and will not have malicious abuse of power.

But there are things we can do. The first – which is pretty much NOT what people think, is we can try to address problems as close to the source as possible.
DECENTRALIZE, DISTRIBUTE

An egregiously corrupt balif has very bad impact on a tiny number of people.
If the US Attorney General is merely biased – not even truly corrupt – the entire country suffers

Big failure in small domains is far less damaging that small failure in large domains.

Apply that to guns and schools:

The FBI is the WRONG body to deal with this.
There are I think 35,000 FBI agents. School shootings should just not be their job.
The people who SHOULD have been dealing with Cruz are those closest to him.
A bad assessment by local authorities has local consequences and will result in local consequences. We have Gov. Scott calling for Wray’s head right now.
No doubt there should be consequences for the FBI.
But the FBI is the wrong tool for this job.

There are some studies that strongly suggest that mass school shootings have increased since we created “gun free school zones”. These laws may have had ZERO effect on whether there were guns in or about schools. But they had a major effect on Mass killers. The laws littlerally called out a rich target with incredible emotional apeal, where they could be certain to have the longest possible time period before armed opposition. It meant that for the first several minutes they do not have to conceive of the possibility of armed opposition.

The purpose of allowing teachers to have guns secured in their classrooms is not to guarantee that there is a gun in a few classrooms in a school. It is to destroy the guarantee there is not.
Once it is possible, the mass killer must most more cautiously. One person with one gun can end any killing spree very early. And that person could be arround any corner.

Again look to solve problems at the bottom and whether locally or otherwise NOT by imposing laws. Laws do not change the behavior of violent criminals. They change the behavior of the law abiding. That is NOT what you want.

Another thing I would note is that in nearly all instances the solution to a problem WILL create new problems.

Allow teachers to have guns secured in their classrooms, and you will have a couple of instances every year where a teacher shoots a student – without sufficient justification. Or where a gun is handled carelessly and a student steals it and harms others.

Instead of having 17 deaths in one day in one incident, you will have one here, and one there, and ….

It is important to remember perfection is not possible – even the best solution will still result in bad things, and mistakes.

But we are also supposed to learn from mistakes.

The argument for gun control would be vastly more persuasive – if it had not been tried repeatedly and failed. Learning from mistakes would mean that instead of the left rushing out to try once again what has never worked, saying – what else can we try ?
Also saying – that did not work, lets get rid of it.

Learning from mistakes requires checking for mistakes and recognizing that you have made them. By ethnicity there is ZERO statistically significant differences between rates of violent death where guns are tightly controlled and where they are not.

An honest person would note – that did not work.

The very existance of FBI tip lines and 911 makes it so that we call them and that ends our personal responsibility for anything.
I am not trying to say we should end 911.

But we should remember that when we provide a centralized system – it will likely replace competely all lower responsibility.

Dave, “Are you trying to say that drugs are in any way at all a free market ?”
No way. Big Pharma has locked up monopolistic practices in this product line for years and continue to do so by buying politicians.

My point was many drugs have been proven to be dangerious, leading to more harm than good. Your free market thinking supports allowing enough people to die or be harmed until the cost of legal defense for the company becomes more expensive than the income generated by the drug. ie Opioids, great income generator, even after the harm they were bringing, but now with legal defense cost, many companies are discontinuing production.

As for anti-depresents, the AMA needs to get out of the pants of pharma and create strict guideline for adolescent treatment where these young adults are followed much closer or everyone on them is monitored closer. AND, how does the medical community get around insurance programs that may limit the amount of monitoring even when it is justified.

I have little interest in the AMA. Frankly ALL professional bodies have far too much power.

I am a registered Architect. I am not a member of the AIA – the AMA equivalent.
The AIA is fixated on restricting the practice of architecture as much as possible.
Assuring that there are fewer architects, that they are manditory for more projects and that they are paid more.

Legal defense costs do not have to exceed the revenue from the drug.
Very very tiny changes in profits have dramatic effects on corporate conduct.
Change the profit of a company from 4% to 3% and it will become starved of capital rapidly.
You also forget that bad press is far more powerful than legal costs.

Opoids do generate income for Pharma.
But the statistical evidence is DAMNING cut back on perscription opoids and perscription overdoses drop, but non-perscription overdoses skyrocket, and with Fentynal and carfentynal that is increasing even more dramatically

We have lots of correlations like that – teen marijuana use exactly mirrors teen alcohol use.
Reduce one you increase the other.

Ross Ulbricht – the “dread pirate roberts” of the silk road was convicted and sent to prison for life because 6 people purportedly died of overdoses of drugs sold on Silk Road.
Yet actual studies show that being able to buy drugs on silk road has a substantial overall reduction in drug related deaths.

There was less face to face interactions with violent drug dealers.
Like ebay sellors were rated and bad sellors failed, the result is that drug quality was consistent, and that reduces overdoses.

Bad things are going to happen in the world. They are going to happen with free markets, they are going to happen without. BUT they are going to happen less and decline faster with free markets.

I think your SSRI argument is garbage – not because it is false – though I worry about its accuracy, it is like much of what we hear about vaccinations, but because even if it is true the benefits dwarf the costs – including school shootings.
.
You can not look only at the harms of something – even water is toxic.
You must look at the net.

Now should we figure out how to identify who taking an SSRI will become a mass killer ?
Absolutely. But we should not assume that will be easy or quick.

Should we fire the FBI agents who screwed up – absolutely.
Should we expect perfection – from markets, or government – not a chance.
Holding someone accountable when they fail, is possible
creating a world in which failure is not possible, is not.
You punish failure to reduce failure.
You can not do so by changing the law.

Dave “Why should we have a bill of rights if you have to surrender it to take legal and for most beneficial drugs”

Bull Shi%!!!! My mom was on Cumadin for blood thinner because she had a stroke before the other newer drugs came out in the last 5-10 years. She had to go have her blood tested for coagulation so it did not get to thin every 2 weeks. The doctor would not give her another script unless she did that. So what the F is the difference between monitoring for blood coagulation and monitoring for side effects from mental drugs?

If the “monitoring is by law or regulation – there is none.
If it by doctors, insurance companies or drug manufactureres it is fine.

I have zero problems with a doctor saying if you take this drug while under my care, you will be monitored.
I do not have a problem with an insurance company saying – if you wish to be re-imbursed for drug costs, you will be monitored
I do not have a problem with a drug manufacturer saying if you buy our product you will be monitored.

I would note that the earilest building codes were driven by insurance companies, not government. Even today most building codes are concocted by private associations.
The problems come when GOVERNMENT rather than insurance companies require conformance to a private code.

“Question, in a free market Dave libertarian world, how do you solve this problem?”

Fallacy. Your question presumes all problems are solved top down.

How would I solve ANY market problem ?
Change my buying or selling behavior – if the issue is important to me,
boycott or pickett or protest.

The actual solution is not going to come from me telling others what to do.
I do not know – neither do you.

Some problems may not get solved – that means at our current level of standard of living we do not care enough about them – i.e. other problems are more important.
And that is how it should be.

We can not at this moment afford to solve every problem we think we know how to solve – much less those we do not.

But we are going to invest NO MATTER WHAT.
We are going to invest based on the amount of wealth we have and can keep.
The more government takes the less we invest.

Investment means TRYING TO SOLVE unsolved problems.
So I would make all nescary changes to minimize government.
knowing that will significantly increase investment and therefore the amount of problems that get solve.

What that WILL NOT do, is assure that the problems that YOU think are critical get solved.
But it will assure that those problems that enough of us value highly enough will get solve if possible.

I think I posted some statistics elsewhere, but even accepting the “facts” about IRA,

Almost all their efforts and money were focussed DOMESTICALLY.
I.e. that Million dollars was nearly all spent “influencing” russians in russia.

Of what was spent in the US – less than 10% of it was spent BEFORE the election, and of that most was spent in 2015 – before Trump was a candidate.

The bulk of the spending was ISSUE advertisements, not candidate advocacy.

Interestingly Micheal Moore prominently attended one of the Anti-Trump Rallies fostered by the Russians – so he is one of those “unwitting americans”.

Of all of this spending less than $2000 was spent in those 4 states that “tipped” the election.

If $2000 in spending flipped about 100K votes – then the russians are about 50,000 times better at the efficiency of their political advertising than the very best US political campaign.
HRC spent about $20 for every vote she received.
That presumes that the spending was uniform.
What is more true is that she spent hundreds of dollars for each vote in swing states.

Finally one interesting obsevation I heard was – If the russians were so politically savy that they could target 100K in advertising to flipp the election – why couldnit the Clinton campaign figure the same thing out ?

This election ultimately pivotted because Trump narrowly won 4 swing states that he was not supposed to win. Trumps long shot to win according to the pundits required winning FL, NH, NV
He narrowly won FL, He lost NH by so little that fraud could be a very serious factor. He lost NV.

But he Won PA, OH, WI, and MI which were supposed to favor clinton by 6 points.

You can add a million votes to Clinton’s tally in CA and NY and change nothing.
You can subtract a million votes from Trumps tally and 30 deep red states and change nothing.

Trump targeted the Rust Belt. He made no secret about it.
If the Clintons did not know he was targeting the rust belt they were idiots.

This election did tip on only about 70.000 votes. But those are 70.000 votes that Trump won with his message and that Clinton lost with hers.
The Russians had absolutely nothing to do with winning those states.

There is absolutely no angle you can look at this bizzarre “russia” claim that actually makes sense.

Since NC is a hot bed for college basketball on “Tobacco Road”, we have had almost a full pages of articles concerning the FBI investigation into basketball recruiting over the past 3-4 days. This link privides just the issue with Louisville that was reprinted locally.

I am so happy the FBI is concentrating their efforts on things that impact the general public, instead of minor issues like kids threatening school shootings.

Can you explain why I should care about college basketball recruiting ?
Is there any force being used ? If not, what crime is involved ?

I do not understand nor value the connection between eduction and sports.
I think they should be divorced.
I do not think public education money should go to sports.
But then I do not think there should be public education money.

If a private school wishes to have sports – that is its business.
It there is money involved – absent force that is not the business of the government.

We continue to be under the delusion we have a right to prohibt non-harmful acts we do not like.

Ron, there is no doubt that many of our big universities have sold their souls to big-time athletics, specifically football and basketball. The money to be made in TV and endorsement contracts and in sales of licensed products is well into the hundreds of millions.

Making sure that the “right people” get their hands in these millions is obviously far more important to the FBI than worrying about some random fatherless kid, who may one day shoot up a school.

My point was while we have stories about the FBI ignoring or slightly following a report of a violent individual leading to the school shooting, they have wasted millions and hundreds of hours on a presidential snipe hunt and investigating college recruiting.

Government is too big. Tell the FBI what their priorities are, limit their res and let them concentrate on a more limited number of issues that harm others. Who is being harmed with the college recruiting payoffs by shoe companies? Let the NCAA handle that!

Dave, I agrre with you and add one comment. In addition to minimizing mistates and corruption by downsizing government, it improves one main reason government exist. To provide for the safety of the citizenship. If the FBI was not sinpe hunting and on wild goose chases, they would be able to concentrate on things like reports of violent people.

The world is not perfect and is not perfectable. But it does improve over time.
All or nearly all of that improvement is the consequence of what people do in their own lives.
That is what we must encourage.

Trump is inarticulately touting arming teachers as the solution to the “mass school shooting”
problem. While not as bad as what the left seeks to do, this is not the answer.
Partly because there is no answer that will completely end this, and partly because we do not want one size fits all solutions.

The consequence of “gun free school zone” laws is that nucases know that schools are a soft target for their heinous acts.

The largest effect of ending gun free school zone laws will not be armed teachers shooting it our with mass killers in the halls. It will be that mass killers can no longer target schools knowing for certain that that have a 5-15 minute window to murders unopposed before they face opposition.
If they target a school – any teacher could be an immediate threat and an armed teacher could be waiting for them arround each corner. Merely having to slow down would radically reduce carnage.

But the objective is not to arm 20% of teachers – or 2%.
The critical objective is to end the certainty of nutjobs that they have a softtarget.
Each individual school should be free to decide on its own how to respond.

We do not want federal law mandating anything. What we want is federal law that does nto preclude schools from trying anything.

Different schools will try different things and we will learn what works and even come up with ideas that have not been immagined.

My remarks above are about guns – but they are also about everything.

There is not a known right answer to most any problem that the federal government addresses.
Nor is the answer as certain to be the same in Biluxi and Portland.

The less top down central planning we have the more experimentation and spontaneous order we have.

Priscilla, just heard something on the news that makes one asked what more could be done? The sheriff’s office in Florida had an armed school resource officer at the school when the shootings occurred. He was outside and took a defensive position outside while the shots kept happening inside. Another government failure!

I think what we need is a private security force instead of Barney Fife’s and Paul Blart’s acting like law enforcement ready to run at the first sign of trouble.

I have criticised and will continue to criticise the police when they fail.

But they do a difficult and dangerous job.

I am very disturbed about what you described at Parkland.

I can understand fear and self preservation.
I do not think I could actively charge in and take on the parkland shooter.
But I did not volunteer to be a police officer,
and that is the job.

When there is an active killer on the loose an immediate threat to innocent people,
the policemen on the scenes job is to protect others.
If that means charging towards the hail of bullets – that is hat you must do.
If you can not, find another job.

Regarding the sheriff’s officer who failed to enter the building, while the shooter was slaughtering the kids: like Dave, I get it, he was afraid. Also, like Dave, I understand that his was a job that required him to protect the kids, whether he was afraid or not.

The Broward County sheriff is a political guy, and he attended the CNN “town hall,” the other night at which NRA spokesperson, Dana Loesch, was harassed and vilified for trying to make the case that Americans are guaranteed the right to defend themselves, with guns, if necessary. She specifically kept reiterating the fact that only 38 states report into the national gun-database background check system, and even then, their reporting is not always accurate. She questioned how background checks can be helpful, if they’re not accurate.

The sheriff (and Jake Tapper, who I used to think was a decent journalist) sat quietly by , as Ms. Loesch was called a murderer and a liar. Meanwhile, the sheriff knew all along that his own deputy had failed to act in a crisis. Of course, he didn’t announce it until the next day.

And, we’re supposed to give up our right to guns, so that guys like him and his deputy can protect us…

Interesting, I agree with the last two comments by you and Dave completely. As for Dave’s comment about one size does not fit all, their was a new article on PBS coveting an Ohio school where teachers with carry permit can bring their guns, lock the in safes in classrooms, the safes have fingerprint and pushbutton combination locks, the teachers have passed training and go through training on a regular basis and pass other requirements. This works in that school.

Now would that work in San Francisco or Manhatten where liberal teachers that have never seen a gun and are lucky to know which end the bullet exits? No! To begin with they would never allow it and if it happened they would demonstrate until it was repealed.

Most everyone, except those with Libertarian leanings want Washington to dictate what happens in all schools. That will never happen as it wont work.

The other issue is legislation. Joe CommonSense will off a one page bill calling for stricter background checks. That bill may have 80% support in bot house and senate. SuzieBleadingHeart liberal will get a waiting period added and support will drop to 60%. Jerry AnriGun wi!l get age limit added for buying a long gun and support drops to 50-50. Bill goes for a vote and does not pass on actual vote.

How about one bill for one issue and vote each one up or down. Even the NRA supports some chage. And maybe that will get resource officers other than Barney Fifes protecting some schools

There are scenes in a number of movies where some criminal pulls a gun in a court or bar or diner in some southern state and finds himself drawn down on by the entire room.

Jokes with a touch of reality.

I would note that with schemes like that in OH, you are going to trade vastly reduced mass shootings for an increase in teachers shooting a student.
You MIGHT actually get more total deaths – but not all at once and at random.

Loesch handled an incredibly hostile audience extremely ably and had good answers for all questions.

Conversely the Town Hall absolutely confirmed the fear of gun rights advocates that these people are not after “sensible regulation” they are after an outright ban of everything.

We continue to fixate on an “assualt Weapons Ban. Which is stupid.
Not only was the prior AWB stupid, and ineffective, but it was about cosmetics not consequence.

The Las Vegas shooting is one of very few where the weapons used were chosen carefully and the correct weapon for the use.

An AR-15 is the WRONG weapon for a school shooting. They are for distances greater than 20 ft and open spaces. They are a bad choice for close quarters and short distances.
handguns are a far better choice for that environment. they are easier to conceal easier to handle in more confined spaces.

But they do not look as “cool”
Drug dealers do not use AR-15’s. Bank Robbers do not use AR-15’s.

Dave, as far as background checks go, I am not in favor of banning anyone who’s ever visited a shrink or been prescribed an anti-depressant from owning a gun. On the other hand, if someone has been convicted of a felony of any kind, that should be a disqualifier. If states are not reporting felony convictions to a database meant to prevent criminals from owning guns, then that has to change.

As far as mental health goes, I agree that it is a very thorny problem, and we can’t be expected to give up our right to privacy in order to exercise our right to self-defense. On the other hand, if someone has been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, it probably is not safe for that person to own a gun. Likewise, if someone is known to be extremely abusive.

David French wrote a column describing what I think could be one solution ~ not the only solution, but one that would go a long way to keeping guns out of the wrong hands. It’s “gun violence restraining orders,” which would be issued by a local court, after a petition and hearing. The petition would have to be brought by a relative, guardian, or someone else in a position to know why the order is needed, and the person in question would be entitled to a hearing, before a temporary restraining order was issued, for a specified length of time. At the end of such time, there could be another hearing, at which the order could be extended or revoked.

Obviously, just like any other restraining order, these GVRO’s would have to be strictly enforced, if they were to be effective, but it would be a way to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, while still respecting the privacy of those who suffer from mental illness. Not perfect, but better than a database or a “tips” hotline.

Priscilla, I heard that proposal and thought it a viable alternative. Problem is we would never know how much violence was prevented, but we would hear tons when someone with a GRO issued on them would get a gun and murder someone. ” These laws do not prevent a criminal from violence”

Something like this, central databases for backgrohnd checks, age requirements and centralized tip lines would not infringe on rights. It would actually insure the rights we have would be secure from those wanting to gegin banning weapons.

Dave, your positions are going to lose. At some point, it is going to be someone like those with 39 complaints getting put on a list, or guns like AR-15 being banned. Trump IS going to lose next election. Someone like Sanders, Warren or Brown IS going to be president. The house and senate IS going to be democrat controlled. AND SCOTUS IS going to be democrat, so when banning a type of weapon comes to them, they WILL support the ban.

Dave, I hope I am wrong also, but when you have a complete moron in the White House that has fairly good policies, but a mkuth that compketely distracts from all he might do good, I think most any Democrat can defeat him, including Jerry Brown.

Then just looking at PA redistricting and doing away with the ” goofie ” like districts tthat helped create safe GOP seats, there are now 5 swing districts that the total dislike of Trump by 6o% of the voters may well swing just those 5. That means only 19 in the rest of the country will have to be flipped to make Crumbs Pelosi house speaker.. And the senate only has to flip. two.

And that does not take into account just one insane tweet from Trump that can take his net polling from a negative 5 to a negative 15. And he is fully capable of doing that.

And I think if the senate flips in 2018 and any SCOTUS justice retires, Shumer will not bring forward anynof Trumps appointments, even for two years.

There has been much debate about Trump’s IQ. as Jordan Peterson – who besides his youtube fame is actually an expert on things like IQ, noted, Trump certainly has a high IQ
He has all the attributes of High IQ – he has been succesful in multiple domains. Real Estate Entertainment, politics

Obnoxious, sexist, certainly true.

I would further note that his core supporters remain with him – ferverently, and his approval rating – though still low, has risen substantially and is above where it was at the election.

The Atlanta Fed is now talking a 4% economy in 2018. If that is the case it is highly unlikely that Republicans – even in the house, will lose seats.
Further if that is sustained – Trump will be re-elected easily.

Further the democratic party is nationally too far left and drifting further.
This is less of a problem for non-national races – Northam a